r^ 


*e= 


=& 


t 


AN  EXCURSION  IN 
SOUTHERN  HISTORY 


Briefly  set  forth  in  the 
correspondence  between 


SENATOR  A.  J.  BEVERIDGE 

— and — 

DAVID  RANKIN  BARBEE 

MANAGING    EDITOR    OF    THE 
ASHEVILLE  (N.  C.)  CITIZEN 


ORIGINALLY  PUBLISHED  IN  THE 
SUNDAY  CITIZEN  IN  MAY,  1927 


Cs 


REPUBLISHED  BY  LANGBOURNE  M.  WILLIAMS 

OF  RICHMOND,  VIRGINIA 

MARCH,  1928 


Service  Printing  Co. 
Asheville 


3Sz 


^t 


LINCOLN  ROOM 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


MEMORIAL 

the  Class  of  1901 

founded  by 

HARLAN  HOYT  HORNER 

and 

HENRIETTA  CALHOUN  HORNER 


AN   EXCURSION   IN 
SOUTHERN  HISTORY 


Briefly  set  forth  in  the 
correspondence  between 


SENATOR  A.  J.  BEVERIDGE 

— and — 

DAVID  RANKIN  BARBEE 

MANAGING    EDITOR    OP    THE 
ASHEVILLE   (N.  C.)  CITIZEN 


ORIGINALLY  PUBLISHED  IN  THE 
SUNDAY  CITIZEN  IN  MAY,  192  7 


REPUBLISHED  BY  LANGBOURNE   M.  WILLIAMS 

OF   RICHMOND,   VIRGINIA 

MARCH,   1928 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2012  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign 


http://www.archive.org/details/excursioninsouthOObarb 


973. 1 


FOREWORD 


IT  was  my  good  fortune  to  be  among  the  last  of  the  men 
with  whom  the  late  Senator  Albert  J.  Beveridge  of 
Indiana  corresponded  during  the  final  weeks  of  his  brilliant 
life.  This  correspondence  was  published  with  explanatory 
notes  in  The  Asheville  Sunday  Citizen  during  the  month  of 
May,  1927,  and  has  attracted  so  much  attention,  North  and 
South,  East  and  West,  and  even  as  far  away  as  England  and 
Australia,  that  a  great  many  requests  have  been  made  of  me 
to  have  it  republished  in  a  more  permanent  form. 

Mr.  Langbourne  M.  Williams,  of  Richmond,  Virginia,  a 
banker  who  is  much  interested  in  preserving  the  historic 
records  of  the  South,  is  the  latest  to  press  me  in  this  matter, 
and  he  has  kindly  consented  to  bear  the  cost  of  publication 
in  its  present  form. 

As  the  correspondence  with  Senator  Beveridge  was 
merely  one  of  the  accidents  of  life,  it  developed  naturally, 
and,  of  course,  was  spontaneous.  My  sole  purpose  in  writing 
Mr.  Beveridge  my  first  letter,  and  in  continuing  the  cor- 
respondence at  his  urging,  was  to  determine  if  the  time  was 
ripe  to  offer  the  truth  about  the  South' s  side  of  the  War  of 
the  60s  to  a  Northern  historian.  I  thought  that  if  Beveridge 
responded  graciously  to  my  suggestions,  with  his  great  fame 
and  wonderful  ability,  coupled  with  the  fact  that  he  was  a 
Republican,  this  might  influence  other  Northern  historians 
to  inform  themselves  and  write  without  prejudice  about  the 
South.  The  heartiness  and  cordiality  with  which  Beveridge 
met  my  offers  of  help  indicate,  to  my  mind  at  least,  that  my 
intervention  was  providential. 

DAVID  RANKIN  BARBEE. 

Asheville,  N.  C,  March  31,  1928. 


ARTICLE  I. 

FOR  a  Southern  man  to  write  anything  about  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  is  just  the  same  as  fooling  with  dyna- 
mite. You  never  know  when  it  is  going  to  explode  and 
carry  you  up  in  fragments.  This,  however,  has  not  de- 
terred me  from  occasionally  writing  about  the  Eman- 
cipator; and  usually  the  publication  of  these  fugitive 
articles  has  brought  down  on  my  devoted  head  con- 
demnation and  round  abuse  ?ven  from  Southern  people. 
To  this  extent  has  the  Lincoln  myth  grown. 

One  of  the  foremost  historians  in  the  South,  a  man 
of  wide  learning  and  splendid  ability,  less  than  a  week 
ago  wrote  me :  "I  have  never  seen  a  life  of  Lincoln  since 
Nicolay  and  Hay's  that  is  not  an  attempt  to  make  him 
the  greatest  American  which,  of  course,  is  pure  'bunk.' 
They  do  this  to  make  it  sell,  and  I  have  despaired  of  see- 
ing it  corrected  in  my  time." 

This  quotation  is  not  singular  but  represents  the 
body  of  the  most  enlightened  opinion  among  the  scholars 
in  history  in  the  South,  and  it  is  typical  of  numerous  let- 
ters I  have  received  within  the  past  two  or  three  months. 
The  foremost  writer  in  history  and  biography  in  the 
South,  one  of  the  ablest  men  in  America,  recently  wrote 
me: 

"Personally,  I  am  disgusted  with  the  Lincoln  cult, 
and  believe  that  its  purposes  are  reprehensible  and 
unworthy — viz.,  to  gloze  over  unpleasant  facts,  and  at- 
tempt to  make  Lincoln  second  only  to  Christ,  I  admire 
Lincoln,  but  as  Ben  Jonson  said  of  Shakespeare,  'this 
side  of  idolatry.'  " 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

Some  months  ago  I  wrote  an  article  for  The  Sunday 
Citizen  on  Washington  and  Lincoln,  in  which  I  cried 
out  against  the  attempt  being  made  by  Northern  in- 
fidels and  iconoclasts  to  destroy  Washington  in  the 
affections  of  the  American  people  and  to  elevate  Lin- 
coln to  a  place  next  to  God.  This  article,  without  my 
knowledge,  was  sent  to  the  late  Senator  Albert  J.  Bev- 
eridge of  Indiana,  who  spent  the  last  years  of  his  bril- 
liant life  writing  an  authoritative  and  definitive  life 
of  Lincoln.  To  the  sender  Mr.  Beveridge  wrote  back: 
"Thank  you  so  much  for  sending  me  Mr.  Barbee's 
article.  It  is  excellent,  I  have  a  little  of  that  view  my- 
self, for  I  think  Washington  was  very  great  indeed." 

Emboldened  by  this  complimentary  reference,  some 
ten  days  later  I  wrote  Senator  Beveridge  a  long  letter, 
in  the  course  of  which,  among  other  things,  I  said : 

"It  is  generally  understood  that  you  are  writing  a 
life  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  I  trust  that  this  information  is  true; 
for,  judging  by  your  noble  biography  of  John  Marshall 
the  life  of  Lincoln  should  be  an  authoritative  work  that 
every  good  man  in  this  republic  will  want  to  read.  If 
information  about  this  is  true,  may  I  not  trespass  upon 
your  kindness  and  patience  long  enough  to  make  a  sug- 
gestion or  two  that  is  worthy  of  the  attention  of  any  one 
writing  the  life  of  such  a  genius  and  great  man  as 
Abraham  Lincoln  was? 

"First,  I  would  say  that  no  life  of  Lincoln  can  be 
be  a  correct  one  that  does  not  properly  assess  the 
character  of  his  great  antagonist,  Jefferson  Davis.  And 
neither  can  a  correct  life  of  Lincoln  be  written  that 
does  not  give  the  Southern  as  well  as  the  Northern 
background  of  the  history  made  by  Mr.  Lincoln  and  Mr. 
Davis  and  through  which  both  lived. 

"Mr.  Davis  is  still  a  much  execrated  man  in  the 
North  and  much  neglected  in  the  South.  As  Lamar  so 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

justly  said  to  Hoar,  when  the  Amnesty  Bill  was  being 
debated:  'If  he  (Davis)  was  a  traitor,  every  Southern 
Senator  here  was  a  traitor  and  every  man,  woman 
and  child  in  the  Confederacy  was  a  traitor.  He  did 
no  more  than  all  of  us  did.' 

"Every  Life  of  Lincoln  I  have  read,  except 
Bledsoe's,  gives  the  Northern  viewpoint  instead  of  the 
National  viewpoint  of  the  man;  and  the  Lincoln  myth 
has  grown  so  huge  in  late  years  that  we  have  lost  sight 
of  the  man  in  the  myth.  Why  not  paint  him  with  the 
warts  on  his  face,  as  Cromwell  commanded  the  young 
Lely  to  do  his  portrait? 

"I  hope  to  see  you  write  a  greater  book  on  Lin- 
coln than  you  wrote  on  Marshall.  I  hope  to  find  in 
it  the  blemishes  on  his  character  as  well  as  the  great 
and  lasting  beauties.  I  hope  you  will  not  overlook  the 
fact  that,  while  he  was  a  very  humane  man  in  many 
of  his  acts,  he  it  was  at  last  who  was  responsible  for 
the  horrors  of  Andersonville;  that  while  he  showed 
some  of  the  Christ  spirit  he  never  believed  in  Christ 
and  never  was  a  professed  Christian;  that  the  man 
had  so  many  sides  to  his  character  he  is  what  he  always 
was,  a  Mystic. 

"The  more  I  study  the  cause  of  the  Civil  War,  the 
more  I  am  led  to  believe  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  as  much 
of  a  hot  head  as  Yancey,  as  much  of  a  fanatic  as  many 
of  our  Southern  people  said  Jefferson  Davis  was.  And, 
more  than  that,  I  often  think  that  if  he  had  shown  as 
much  patience  at  the  outset  of  his  administration  in 
dealing  with  the  South  as  he  showed  in  the  later  years 
of  it  in  dealing  with  the  problems  of  his  own  people — 
the  kind  of  patience  shown  by  Woodrow  Wilson  during 
the  first  two  years  of  the  World  War — there  would 
have  been  no  Confederacy,  no  Civil  War,  no  wreckage 
of  the  South. 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

"Lincoln's  life  is  not  the  study  of  a  man.  It  is 
and  must  be  the  study  of  an  epoch — such  an  epoch 
as  the  French  Revolution,  such  an  epoch  as  Martin 
Luther  was  the  central  figure  in.  Am  I  right  or  just 
dreaming?" 

This  is  just  a  part  of  the  long  letter  I  wrote  Mr. 
Beveridge  and  by  which  I  introduced  myself  to  him. 
It  is  quoted  at  such  length  to  pave  the  way  for  an  in- 
telligent understanding  of  the  correspondence  that  fol- 
lows, a  correspondence  which  has  convinced  me  that 
had  Beveridge  lived  to  complete  his  Lincoln  it  would 
have  been  one  of  the  greatest  books  ever  written  about 
the  Civil  War,  a  work  that  would  have  done  more  to 
destroy  the  Lincoln  myth  and  to  lead  the  way  to  a  bet- 
ter understanding  of  the  South  at  the  North  than  all 
of  the  fol-de-rol  that  has  for  years  been  spilled  by 
politicians  on  both  sides  of  the  line. 

Much  to  my  surprise  and  delight  Senator  Beveridge 
was  not  offended  by  my  letter,  but  immediately  wrote 
back  the  following  long  reply: 

"Dear  Mr.  Barbee: 

"Thank  you  for  your  good  letter  of  March  3.  It 
is  admirable  in  every  way — one  of  the  most  sensible  I 
have  ever  received. 

"I  agree  with  nearly  everything  you  say,  albeit 
there  are  one  or  two  points  that  are  not  clear  to  me.. 

"For  this  reason,  I  wonder  if  you  would  do  me 
the  favor  of  reading  the  mss.  of  at  least  the  first  two 
chapters  of  Volume  II  of  my  Lincoln.  In  the  first 
of  these  I  try  to  make  clear  to  the  reader  what  was  in 
the  mind  of  the  Southern  people  that  induced  them 
to  try  to  set  up  for  themselves — I  mean  the  roots  of 
Southern  feeling;  in  the  second,  I  try  to  show  what 
took  place  in  the  fateful  year  of  1850.    The  fact  seems 

8 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

to  be  that  the  lines  were  drawn  at  that  time — at  least 
that  is  the  view  of  Professor  Phillips,  with  whose  writ- 
ings you  are,  of  course,  familiar. 

"All  of  my  chapters  have  been  read  and  criticis- 
ed by  more  than  twenty  of  the  men  whom  I  consider 
to  be  the  heads  of  American  scholarship ;  and  the 
chapters  I  would  like  you  to  read  have  also  been  read 
by  two  or  three  Southern  scholars  and  by  the  Honorable 
J.  M.  Dickinson  of  this  city  (Chicago).  As  you  will  re- 
call, he  was  Secretary  of  War  under  Taft,  is  a  native 
of  Tennessee,  and  was  a  Confederate  soldier  at  the 
age  of  fifteen.  (Senator  Beveridge  is  incorrect  here. 
Judge  Dickinson,  whom  I  have  known  since  boyhood, 
was  a  native  of  Columbus,  Miss.) 

"While  I  have  availed  myself  of  the  suggestions 
of  all  those  gentlemen,  I  want  yours  too ;  so,  if  it  won't 
bore  you  too  much,  I  will  send  you  the  mss.  of  those 
chapters  and  others  if  you  wish. 

"Of  course,  I  do  this,  dear  Mr.  Barbee,  in  absolute 
confidence  and  if  you  are  willing  to  read  them,  I  must 
ask  you  not  to  let  the  mss.  out  of  your  hands  and  not 
to  say  anything  whatsoever  to  anybody  whomsoever 
about  any  statement  I  make.  The  reason  for  this  is  that 
although  every  line  of  these  and  other  chapters  in  the 
book  has  been  re-written  from  eight  to  fifteen  times, 
I  nevertheless  consider  the  chapters  in  their  present 
state  as  tentative  and  subject  to  change  at  any  and 
every  point.  Also,  of  course,  I  do  not  want  a  wrong 
impression  of  any  kind  to  get  about  concerning  my 
method  of  treatment. 

"To  my  mind,  the  biographer  or  historian  is  a  dra- 
matist— or  perhaps  a  scientist,  if  that  word  is  not  too 
big — and  he  has  nothing  to  do  with  prejudice  one  way 
or  the  other.  It  is  not  for  him  to  boost  or  knock  any 
man  or  section,  but,  on  the  contrary,  to  get  all  the  facts, 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

little  and  big,  and  let  them  tell  the  story.  If  he  does 
not  do  this,  I  think  he  is  a  mere  propagandist  and,  in- 
deed, a  dishonest  man. 

"It  has  been  very  hard  indeed  for  me  to  write 
this  biography.  My  father  and  all  my  brothers  were 
in  the  Union  army,  and  I  was  brought  up  on  the  most 
intense  pro-Northern  war  teachings.  It  has  been  hard, 
therefore,  to  resist  the  pull  of  lifetime  prejudice.  But  I 
have  done  the  best  I  could. 

"I  plan  to  make  my  Lincoln  a  companion  piece  of 
my  Marshall ;  continuing  the  institutional  interpreta- 
tion of  America  around  Lincoln  as  the  outstanding 
figure  just  as  I  tried  to  do  the  first  part  about 
Marshall ;  I  am  trying  to  carry  out  that  plan. 

"I  assume,  of  course,  that  I  can  get  Mr.  Bledsoe's 
books  (Is  Davis  a  Traitor?  etc.)  from  the  Library  of 
Congress.  They  are  not  in  the  libraries  here.  Of  course, 
I  want  them  and  indeed,  must  have  them.  From  what 
you  say,  I  take  it  that  Mr.  Bledsoe  cites  authority  for 
all  he  says,  otherwise  his  books  would  not  be  helpful. 

"Thank  you  again,  dear  Mr.  Barbee,  for  writing 
me,  and  let  me  once  more  congratulate  you  on  the 
ability  and  moderation  of  what  you  say.  With  best 
wishes. 

"Faithfully 

"ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE" 

This  was  the  beginning  of  a  correspondence  the 
most  interesting  and  the  most  fruitful  of  a  long  and 
busy  newspaper  career,  that  ended  only  with  the  Sen- 
ator's death.  Back  and  forth  Beveridge  and  I  wrote 
each  other.  Often  I  wrote  him  three  or  four  letters 
a  week,  as  I  accumulated  material  for  him,  explaining 
it  to  him,  as  I  received  replies  to  criticism  I  offered, 
as  I  received  letters  from  notable  men  and  women  in 

10 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

the  South  to  whom  I  applied  for  help  for  the  great  bio- 
grapher. As  a  lesson  in  history  making  and  as  show- 
ing how  kindred  minds  can  meet  and  talk  frankly  with 
each  other  on  disputed  matters,  my  editorial  chief  and 
other  associates  on  The  Citizen  have  suggested  that  I 
give  the  public  a  chance  to  read  this  correspondence; 
and  so  until  the  end  of  the  chapter  I  purpose  doing  so, 
Beveridge's  letters  in  full  and  such  extracts  from  mine 
as  well  illumine  his. 

In  my  first  letter  I  suggested  that  he  should  read 
the  wonderful  books  written  by  Dr.  Albert  Taylor 
Bledsoe,  probably  the  greatest  intellect  the  South  has 
produced  and  surely  the  ablest  disputant  on  the  South- 
ern side  of  the  Slavery  issue.  It  was  my  privilege  to 
send  him  Bledsoe's  "Is  Davis  a  Traitor?"  and  also  the 
1873  volume  of  The  Southern  Review  which  contains 
Bledsoe's  startling  essay  on  Lincoln  and  the  suppressed 
chapters  from  Lamon's  and  Herndon's  lives  of  Lincoln. 
Just  before  his  untimely  death  I  secured,  after  thirty 
years  search,  Bledsoe's  "Liberty  or  Slavery?"  written 
in  1860  and  one  of  the  rarest  books  as  it  is  the  ablest 
discussion  of  slavery  ever  published.  Unfortunately  I 
was  unable  to  send  it  to  Beveridge  and  he  died  without 
having  had  a  chance  of  reading  it. 

In  my  second  letter  to  Beveridge  I  offered  him  the 
use  of  my  private  library  and  sent  him  several  books, 
pamphlets,  etc.  I  directed  his  attention  to  "the  Seces- 
sion movement  in  the  three  pivotal  states  of  Tennessee 
Mississippi  and  Alabama,"  and  wrote:  "Tennessee  was 
moulded  by  Jackson  and  was  probably  the  first  anti- 
slavery  state  in  America.  At  least  the  movement  was 
so  strong  there  that  it  almost  crystallized  into  law  for- 
bidding the  institution.  The  first  Abolition  society  in 
America  was  in  Tennessee,  and  the  first  Abolition  news- 
paper in  this  country,  antedating  Garrison's  by  a  num- 

II 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

ber  of  years,  was  published  in  Tennessee.  The  interest 
in  Mississippi  centers  around  Jefferson  Davis,  and  in 
Alabama  around  Yancey,  who  had  to  use  force  to  get 
Secession  through  the  convention." 

At  this  time  I  also  sent  him  a  little  book  entitled, 
"Methodist  Union,,,  written  by  the  late  Dr.  W.  P.  Harri- 
son, of  Georgia,  one  of  the  ablest  scholars,  writers  and 
preachers  the  Southern  Methodist  Church  has  pro- 
duced. I  felt  sure  that  Senator  Beveridge  would  dis- 
cuss the  Separation  in  the  Methodist  Church  in  1844, 
which  was  the  beginning  of  the  Civil  War,  and  had  a 
"hunch"  that  he  would  use  Northern  histories  as  his 
source  material ;  in  which  event  the  Southern  church 
would  not  get  a  fair  deal. 

To  this  letter,  on  March  12,  Senator  Beveridge  re- 
plied as  follows: 

"Dear  Mr.  Barbee: 

"Answering  your  courteous  letter  of  March  10  I 
have  sent  for  the  mss,  and  as  soon  as  they  get  here 
(Chicago),  I  will  forward  them  to  you. 

"I  shall  be  glad  to  see  Doctor  Bledsoe's  book,  but, 
as  I  told  you,  unless  he  cites  authority  for  all  state- 
ments, it  will  not  be  helpful  to  me — that  is,  I  cannot 
make  citations  from  it.  As  you,  of  course,  understand 
and  as  I  think  I  tried  to  explain  to  you  in  my  former 
letter,  modern  scholarship  as  well  as  the  principles  of 
art,  imperatively  require  that  nothing  shall  be  set  down 
as  history  or  biography  which  cannot  be  proved  by 
the  sources — these  sources  to  be  cited  in  footnotes.  How- 
ever, I  am  anxious  to  get  Dr.  Bledsoe's  books,  since,  re- 
gardless of  whether  he  gives  citations  of  sources,  I  shall 
have  the  benefit  of  his  point  of  view. 

"I  am  particularly  interested  in  the  sketch  of 
Doctor  Bledsoe,  which  you  say  you  will  send  me;  and 

12 


40 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

especially  the  source  material  as  to  the  states  men- 
tioned. 

"I  am  not  greatly  impressed  by  what  you  say  about 
the  first  Abolition  Society  in  America  being  in  Ten- 
nesses  because  that  was  before  the  abolition  assault 
which,  as  a  concerted  and  organized  movement,  began 
in  1830  and  had  profound  effect  upon  the  change  which 
came  over  Southern  writers  and  thinkers.  This  is 
shown  by  the  very  large  and  sometimes  brilliant  South- 
ern literature  from  1831  up  to  the  end  of  the  war. 

"Thank  you  very  much  indeed  for  sending  me  the 
book  about  the  Methodist  Union.  The  split  in  the 
Methodist  Church  in  1844  showed  clearly  what  was  go- 
ing to  happen  in  politics.  Both  Webster  and  Calhoun 
made  particular  reference  to  the  vital  or  rather  fatal 
rupture.  Their  speeches,  sermons  and  writings  show 
that  Southern  preachers  of  all  denominations  were  the 
most  ardent  protagonists  of  slavery,  which  they  said 
was  'moral  relation;'  just  as  the  thinkers,  speakers  and 
writers  of  the  South,  beginning  with  Professor  Dew  in 
1831,  showed  that  it  was  also  a  necessary  social  and 
economic  relation. 

"But  thank  you  no  end  for  your  kindness  and  be- 
lieve me  with  every  good  wish. 

"Faithfully, 

"ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE" 
"P.  S.  I  repeat,  dear  Mr.  Barbee  that  all  I  want 
is  the  actual  truth,  whatever  it  was,  on  both  sides.  From 
my  point  of  view,  it  is  absurd — yes,  worse  than  ab- 
surd— to  write  a  Life  of  Lincoln  or  any  other  outstand- 
ing man  of  his  time  without  giving  the  point  of  view  of 
the  South  and  giving  it  with  rigid  impartiality.  So  do 
send  me  anything  that  you  can  lay  your  hands  on  that 
will  help  me  in  that  difficult  understanding. 

"I  might  say  to  you  that  I  am  sending  you  my 

13 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

chapters  only  because  I  was  so  much  impressed  with 
your  first  letter  and  because,  from  that  letter,  I  am 
sure  that  you  can  set  me  right  if  I  have  made  any  mis- 
take in  my  mss.  As  you  will  see,  when  you  get  to  it,  I 
have  cited  original  authority  for  every  statement  made ; 
and  to  this  end  have  examined  the  very  large  volume 
of  Southern  books,  speeches,  pamphlets,  newspapers, 
etc.,  etc.,  etc." 

This  highly  interesting  letter  winds  up  with  a 
second  postscript  which  is  written  in  Beveridge's  own 
handwriting : 

" Jackson!  He  was  as  much  against  Abolitionists 
and  Abolitionism  as  Calhoun  and  Clay." 


14 


ARTICLE  II. 

IN  MY  study  of  the  causes  of  the  Civil  War  and  the 
background  of  it,  as  well  as  of  the  lives  and  charac- 
ters of  the  important  men  on  both  sides  of  that 
fratricidal  controversy,  I  have  reached  several  definite 
conclusions  which  I  was  tempted  to  lay  before  Bever- 
idge.  The  outstanding  fact  in  the  history  of  the  South, 
so  far  as  slavery  is  concerned,  is  that  the  people  of 
the  South  resisted  the  introduction  of  slavery  by  Eng- 
land and  its  perpetuation  by  the  New  England  slave 
dealers;  that  as  the  years  passed  the  best  informed 
men  in  the  South  realized  that  slavery  as  an  economic 
proposition  was  a  failure,  slave  property  and  slave 
labor  paying  less  than  3  per  cent  on  the  investment 
in  such  property  and  labor;  and  that  long  before  the 
New  England  Abolitionists  began  their  drive  on  slavery 
a  movement  was  under  way  in  the  South  looking  to 
the  manumission  and  ultimate  abolition  of  the  slaves. 
In  my  native  state  of  Tennessee,  with  whose  history  I 
am  reasonably  familiar,  the  movement  had  so  crystalliz- 
ed that  but  for  the  terrific  political  contests  revolving 
around  Andrew  Jackson  the  State  Legislature  would 
have  passed  a  law  abolishing  slavery.  This  is  well  set 
out  in  some  of  the  histories  of  Tennessee,  notably  the 
school  history  written  by  Prof.  W.  R.  Garrett  and  Hon. 
A.  V.  Goodpasture. 

One  of  the  famous  men  in  Tennessee's  history  was 
Elihu  Embree,  who  edited  the  first  Abolition  newspa- 
per in  this  country  and  founded  the  first  Abolition  So- 

15 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

ciety  in  America,  in  Tennessee.  His  life  and  the  his- 
tory of  his  paper  were  written  by  his  grand  nephew,  the 
late  Bishop  Elijah  Embree  Hoss,  and  published  in  the 
American  Historical  Mazagine  for  April  1897,  Vol.  2, 
No.  2.  Prof.  Caleb  Perry  Patterson  of  the  University 
of  Texas  has  also  discussed  this  movement  thoroughly 
in  a  remarkable  thesis  on  'The  Negro  in  Tennessee." 

In  my  next  letter  to    Beveridge,    discussing    this 
question,  I  wrote: 

"I  see  that  I  did  not  make  myself  clear  on  Jackson 
and  Tennessee.  Of  course  Jackson  was  against  the 
Abolitionists.  He  hated  J.  Q.  Adams  so  that  he  was  led 
into  that  position.  (Adams,  it  will  be  recalled,  was  the 
man  selected  by  the  Abolitionists  to  present  their  pe- 
titions to  Congress,  and  he  was  particularly  hated  by 
Jackson  because  he  had  defeated  Jackson  for  the  presi- 
dency. Old  Hickory  saw  no  good  in  his  enemies  and 
often  was  turned  from  his  righteous  purposes  by  his 
hatreds.  This  was  one  of  those  occasions,  it  is  my 
humble  belief.)  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  entire 
South  hated  the  Abolitionists,  for  the  Abolition  move- 
ment, as  they  interpreted  it,  was  war  on  the  South  for 
the  destruction  of  the  South.  The  South  was  driven 
into  a  defense  of  herself  and  her  own  institutions,  and 
the  rising  anti-slavery  movement  in  the  South  was 
killed  by  the  Abolition  movement  in  the  North. 

"The  point  I  was  seeking  to  make  is  that  it  can  be 
demonstrated  from  our  archives  that  there  was  a  strong 
and  growing  anti-slavery  movement  in  the  South  as  far 
back  as  Colonial  times,  and  that  in  Tennessee  it  had 
reached  the  status  of  a  fixed  statewide  policy  when  po- 
litical conditions  turned  it  back  on  itself  and  fixed 
slavery  on  the  states." 

Senator  Beveridge,  it  will  be  seen,  did  not  attach 
much  importance  to  this  phase  of  our  history,  prefer- 

16 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

ring  to  keep  his  discussion  in  his  Life  of  Lincoln  within 
the  period  actually  covered  by  the  years  of  Lincoln's 
mature  life,  which  began  with  the  Abolition  drive  in 
1830.  Neither  did  he  at  first  recognize  the  importance 
of  the  Separation  of  the  Methodist  church  in  1844  and 
its  influence  in  precipitating  the  War.  To  my  mind 
that  had  more  to  do  with  bringing  on  the  bloody  con- 
flict than  all  the  other  causes  combined,  and,  as  will 
be  seen  later,  I  am  not  alone  in  that  opinion. 

Replying  to  his  request  for  a  sketch  of  Dr.  Albert 
Taylor  Bledsoe,  whose  great  book,  "Is  Davis  a  Trai- 
tor?" I  sent  him,  in  my  letter  of  March  17.  I  wrote 
among  other  things  as  follows : 

"I  hope  you  will  at  least  enjoy  the  acquaintance 
with  Dr.  Bledsoe  and  his  famous  review.  It  was  first 
published  in  St.  Louis  and  then  moved  to  Baltimore, 
and  was  simultaneously  issued  in  London  and  Edin- 
burgh, having  as  large  a  circulation  in  Great  Britain  as 
in  the  United  States,  I  have  understood.  Dr.  Bledsoe 
was  for  many  years  a  contributor  to  the  Edinburgh 
and  the  famous  London  Quarterly  and  enjoyed  the 
confidence  and  respect  of  the  scientists  and  metaphysi- 
cians of  the  Old  World. 

"You  will  note  that  he  says  in  his  essay  on  Lincoln 
that  he  practiced  law  with  Lincoln  and  was  in  daily 
contact  with  him  for  eight  years.  Much  of  the  essay  is 
original  matter,  with  liberal  quotations  from  Lamon 
and  Herndon  and  Holland,  all  of  whose  Lives  of  Lin- 
coln no  doubt  you  have  read.  You  will  also  find  that 
he  quotes  his  authority  for  every  citation  so  that  the 
historian  can  check  up  on  him.  If  your  quick,  sensitive, 
analytical  mind  does  not  revel  in  his  'Davis,'  I  shall 
be  deeply  disappointed. 

"He  (Bledsoe)  was  a  native  of  Frankfort,  Ky., 
graduated  in  the  same  class  at  West  Point  with  Jef- 

17 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

ferson  Davis;  taught  mathematics  there  afterwards; 
resigned  from  the  army  and  became  a  lawyer,  practic- 
ing in  Springfield,  111.,  for  years,  having  adjoining 
offices  to  those  of  Lincoln ;  became  a  priest  in  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  brother-in-law  of  the 
noted  Bishop  Mcllwaine  of  Ohio,  and  soon  was  the  most 
eminent  disputant  in  that  church ;  gave  close  study  to 
its  doctrines  and  could  not  support  the  creed  in  its 
teaching  on  infant  damnation ;  surrendered  his  creden- 
tials and  became  a  Southern  Methodist  preacher  with- 
out a  charge;  was  elected  to  the  chair  of  mathematics 
in  the  University  of  Virginia;  became  world  famous  as 
a  mathematician  and  thinker,  known  in  the  European 
universities  and  member  of  their  scientific  societies; 
elected  to  the  chair  of  mathematics  in  the  University  of 
Mississippi  with  L.  Q.  C.  Lamar  as  his  assistant; 
taught  Lamar  how  to  think  and  trained  many  eminent 
Mississippians  in  the  immediate  pre-war  period;  dur- 
ing the  war  assistant  secretary  of  war  and  confidential 
adviser  of  Jefferson  Davis;  after  the  war  and  until 
his  death  editor  of  The  Southern  Review;  wrote  Ts 
Davis  a  Traitor?'  which  it  is  said,  caused  the  govern- 
ment to  drop  the  prosecution  of  Mr.  Davis;  wrote  a 
Theodicy  and  several  works  on  mathematics  and  philo- 
sophy. He  wrote  with  his  own  fingers  most  of  the 
articles  in  his  Review,  and  when  you  see  what  a  wide 
range  they  cover  you  will  understand  what  a  giant 
mind  he  had.  He  was  the  honestest  writer  I  ever  read 
after." 

Since  writing  the  above  I  have  learned  from  Bishop 
Collins  Denny  of  Richmond  that  Mr.  Davis  sent  Dr. 
Bledsoe  to  England  during  the  closing  months  of  the 
war  to  write  the  "Davis"  book,  because,  as  Bishop 
Denny  states,  "he  could  not  get  the  books  in  the  South 
needed  for  that  work." 

In  the  above  letter  I  also  called  Mr.  Beveridge's 

18 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

attention  to  the  fact  that  while  the  people  of  the  South 
believed  they  had  the  right  to  secede'  under  the  com- 
pact of  1787,  they  did  not  not  wish  to  exercise  that 
right,  and  I  asked  him  to  investigate  the  history  of  the 
several  secession  conventions.  In  passing  it  should  be 
stated  that  Lincoln  himself  over  and  over  again  recog- 
nized that  this  right  existed,  and  even  after  he  was 
president  he  had  Secretary  Seward  instruct  the  Ameri- 
can Ministers  in  England  and  France  to  so  notify  those 
governments.  Yet  in  the  face  of  this  he  more  than  any 
other  man  in  our  history  refused  to  "let  the  erring  sis- 
ters depart,"  and  precipitated  a  war  that  wrecked  the 
South.  This  is  a  historic  fact  you  do  not  find  in  any 
of  the  lives  of  Lincoln  lately  written. 
Continuing  I  wrote  further: 

"Have  you  ever  seen  a  copy  of  R.  G.  Horton's  'A 
Youth's  History  of  the  Great  Civil  War,'  written  and 
published  in  New  York  in  1866?  Horton  was  a  Northern 
man,  a  Copperhead,  I  presume  a  Democrat.  He  writes 
his  history  from  that  viewpoint  and  cites  a  great  deal 
of  matter  that  does  not  put  Lincoln  in  a  fair  or  honest 
light.  Unfortunately  he  does  not  give  his  authorities 
and  it  is  difficult  to  check  up  on  him." 

To  this  letter  Senator  Beveridge  wrote  me  from 
Chicago,  where  he  was  then  residing,  a  letter,  dated 
March  21,  as  follows: 

"Dear  Mr.  Barbee : 

"Thank  you  very  much  for  your  letter  of  March 
17.  You  have  uncovered  a  big  find.  An  attorney  at 
Springfield  named  Bledsoe  went  with  Lincoln  when  he 
was  going  to  have  the  duel  with  Shields,  but  I  never, 
for  a  moment,  imagined  that  this  is  the  same  Bledsoe. 
Lincoln  had  practiced  the  broadsword  for  sometime  be- 
fore the  duel,  and  I  assumed  that  he  had  learned  it  from 


19 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

one  Capt.  Merryman,  who  was  a  military  man.  This, 
however,  was  a  mere  guess;  and,  of  course,  I  cannot  in- 
dulge in  guesses.  Since  Doctor  Bledsoe  was  a  West 
Point  graduate,  it  is  now  clear  who  taught  Lincoln 
the  broadsword. 

"I  shall  read  with  keen  interest  and  return  to  you 
promptly  Doctor  Bledsoe's  book  and  the  volume  of  the 
Southern  Review  with  his  essay  on  Lincoln.  Thank  you 
very  much  indeed,  dear  Mr.  Barbee,  for  your  kind- 
ness in  sending  them  to  me. 

"I  am  writing  to  the  Boston  Public  Library  and 
Atheneum  asking  whether  they  have  complete  files  of 
the  Southern  Review;  I  am  sure  they  have,  and,  if  so,  I 
shall  get  them  when  I  go  East  for  the  summer  and 
start  in  on  the  revision  of  my  first  two  volumes.  As 
you  will  see  from  Chap.  I.  Volume  II,  which,  with  six 
other  chapters  I  am  sending  you  today,  I  have  carefully 
examined  and  made  citations  from  the  Southern  Liter- 
ary Messenger,  Debow's  Review,-  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  but  I 
shall  want  to  supplement  all  the  data  in  that  chapter 
by  any  original  contemporaneous  and  worth-while 
material.  You  will  understand  that  I  cannot  make 
reference  to  everything — to  my  intense  surprise  I  found 
that  the  Southern  pre-war  literature  was  so  very  large 
that  I  had  to  make  selections  from  the  most  notable 
parts  of  it. 

"By  American  Express  pre-paid  I  am  sending  you 
the  first  seven  chapters  of  Volume  II.  I  am  doing  this 
for  the  reason  stated  in  nay  former  letter  and  I  hope 
that  you  will  point  out  any  error  of  fact  that  I  have 
made.  (You  will  observe  that  I  do  not  indulge  in  any 
inferences  or  deductions). 

"While,  as  I  told  you,  these  chapters  have  already 
been  gone  over  by  more  than  twenty  prominent  scholars 
of  the  country  and  by  other  competent  men,  some  of 

20 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

them  in  the  South,  I  want  to  take  no  chance  of  mak- 
ing a  mistake  of  fact  or  being  unfair  to  any  man  or 
section. 

"So,  if  you  will  mark  on  the  mss — I  have  other 
copies — any  alterations  that  you  think  ought  to  be 
made,  I  shall  be  obliged  to  you. 

"If  entirely  convenient,  I  would  thank  you  to  read 
them  as  soon  as  you  can.  If  you  finish  them  during 
April,  pray  return  them  to  me  by  express  collect  to 
4164  Washington  Boulevard,  Indianapolis,  Ind.  I  shall 
be  here  in  Chicago  until  April  1. 

With  best  wishes, 
"Faithfully 
"ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE." 

"P.  S.  About  Jackson:  He  wag  against  the  Aboli- 
tionists not  on  account  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  but  for 
the  same  reason  that  everybody  in  the  South  and  most 
of  the  people  in  the  North  were  opposed  to  them.  What 
you  say  in  this  paragraph  I  have  taken  a  great  deal  of 
space  to  set  out  in  my  first  chapter  of  Volume  II.  Of 
course,  there  was  a  strong  anti-slavery  movement  in 
the  South  up  to  the  beginning  of  the  Abolition  assault, 
which  started  in  1830.  Soon  after  that  Southern  think- 
ers and  writers  declared  that  they  were  thus  forced  to 
make  a  new  examination  of  the  subject  and  they  dec- 
lared that  this  review  showed  that  slavery  was  a  good 
thing  socially,  politically,  economically  and  in  every 
other  way.  At  bottom,  the  Southern  people  did  not 
think  it  possible  for  the  great  hoard  of  blacks  to  be 
emancipated  and,  without  control,  placed  upon  poli- 
tical, social  and  economic  equality,  with  the  whites. 
However,  you  wil)  see  all  this  in  the  chapter  to  which 
reference  is  made.  You  will  observe  that  I  do  not  say 
any  of  these  things  myself,  but  quote  what  Southern 

21 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

speakers,  writers,  and  thinkers  all  said  on  the  sub- 
ject. 

"Yes,  indeed,  I  should  like  very  much  to  read  Mr. 
Horton's  'A  Youth's  History  of  the  Great  Civil  War.'  I 
have  heard  of  it  before,  but  have  not  been  able  to  lay 
hands  on  it  up  to  now. 

"Judging  from  what  they  themselves  said,  I  cannot 
agree  that  the  Southern  Methodist  preachers  (I  am  a 
Methodist  myself,  by  the  way)  thought  slavery  wrong; 
on  the  contrary,  they  and  all  other  Southern  preachers 
of  every  denomination  were  the  stoutest  defenders  of 
th;vt  system.  For  this  they  were  abused  by  the  North- 
ern preachers,  and  especially,  by  the  Abolitionists  with 
a  virulence  well-nigh  unbelievable.  I  do  not  wonder 
that  even  at  this  late  day  they  refuse  to  unite  with  the 
church  North." 

This  last  paragraph  in  the  above  postscript  was  in 
reply  to  this  statement  in  my  letter; 

"Now,  just  a  word  above  the  split  in  Methodism 
and  the  attitude  of  the  Southern  preachers  on  slavery. 
If  you  read  carefully  the  book  I  sent  you,  ('Methodist 
Union'  by  Dr.  W.  P.  Harrison)  you  noticed  that  Bishop 
Andrew  was  deposed  from  office  illegally  and  that 
the  split  was  over  that  action.  You  also  read  that  he 
did  not  want  to  own  slaves,  wished  to  free  those  that 
came  into  his  possession  and  was  forced  by  the  laws  of 
his  state  to  keep  them.  My  father  was  born  in  1832 
and  began  preaching  in  1852.  I  never  heard  him  say 
that  the  Methodist  preachers  wished  slavery  perpetuat- 
ed; but  I  have  a  clear  recollection  that  he  said  many 
times,  slavery  carried  in  its  own  vitals  the  seeds  of  its 
own  destruction,  whether  there  had  been  any  war  or 
not.  Preachers  of  that  day  did  not  look  upon  slavery  as 
immoral  any  more  than  they  looked  upon  liquor  drink- 
ing as  immoral  in  my  boyhood  and  youth.     The  first 

22 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

Prohibition  preachers  in  the  South  were  regarded  pretty- 
much  as  the  ante-bellum  people  regarded  Abolitionists/' 
My  letter  files  show  that  I  replied  briefly  to  Bev- 
eridge's  letter  three  days  later,  calling  his  attention  to 
certain  of  Bledsoe's  critical  and  historical  essays,  in 
the  Southern  Review,  notably  his  review  of  Alexander 
H.  Stephens  "History  of  the  War  Between  the  States," 
in  which  Bledsoe  "cleans  up  with  him  in  masterly 
style. "  I  also  informed  him  that  I  had  secured  an 
original  copy  of  Horton's  History  which  I  was  sending 
him,  and  told  him  of  the  large  collection  of  Copperhead 
literature  now  in  the  archives  of  Washington  and  Lee 
University.  Among  this  is  all  the  editorials  written 
by  Bunford  Samuel,  a  noted  Democratic  war  editor 
of  Philadelphia,  whose  paper  Lincoln  suppressed  be- 
cause it  criticised  him.  I  asked  Beveridge  to  investigate 
the  statements  made  by  Horton  that  Lincoln  suppressed 
many  Democratic  papers  and  put  their  editors  in  prison, 
through  his  minions,  Seward  and  Stanton  and  Don 
Cameron.  This  is  one  of  the  ugliest  chapters  in  Lin- 
coln's life,  the  suppression  of  free  speech,  and  the  as- 
sumption of  dictatorial  powers  by  the  great 
Emancipator. 

As  my  letters  from  this  on  are  largely  reactions 
to  his  book  and  to  his  own  letters,  I  find  that  I  must 
give  them  at  greater  length  than  I  first  thought  neces- 
sary, so  my  next  letter,  which  discusses  intimately  the 
seven  chapters  of  his  book  which  he  so  highly  honored 
me  by  asking  me  to  read,  will  be  printed  practically  in 
full  next  Sunday. 


23 


ARTICLE  III. 

F^ROM  HIS  temporary  home  in  Chicago  on  March  28 
*     Senator  Beveridge  wrote : 

"Dear  Mr.  Barbee: 

"My  parcel  post,  registered  and  insured,  I  am  re- 
turning to  you  to  Southern  Review,  Volume  12,  Number 
25,  January  1773;  'Is  Davis  a  Traitor?  or  Was  Seces- 
sion a  Constitutional  Right,  etc.'  by  Albert  Taylor 
Bledsoe;  and  the  Methodist  Union. 

"Thank  you  so  much  for  letting  me  have  these 
books,  I  shall  make  use  of  each  of  them.  Doctor  Bled- 
soe's little  volume  on  Davis  is  one  of  the  best  if,  indeed 
not  the  best  condensed  statement  of  the  Southern  point 
of  view,  and  I  wish  to  go  over  it  more  carefully.  There- 
fore, I  have  put  an  order  in  to  my  second-hand  bookstore 
to  get  a  copy  for  me. 

"Thank  you  again,  dear  Mr.  Barbee  and  believe  me 
with  best  wishes, 

"Faithfully, 

"ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE" 

Before  this  letter  reached  me  I  had  received  the 
first  seven  chapters  of  the  second  volume  of  the  Lin- 
coln and  was  wading  deeply  and  carefully  through 
them.  It  was  an  extraordinary  pleasure,  which,  how- 
ever, weighed  heavily  on  my  mind,  for  I  realized  that 
I  was  matching  my  lack  of  scholarship  against  the 
knowledge  of  "twenty  of  the  foremost  scholars  in 
history  in  America,"  as  Beveridge  wrote  me,  men  who 

24 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

had  devoted  many  years  to  an  intimate  study  of  Ameri- 
can history.  These  men  also  he  had  honored  with  his 
confidence,  and  it  was  quite  obvious  that  he  had  implicit 
confidence  in  their  judgement. 

It  was  amazing  to  see  the  wide  extent  of  Bever- 
idge's  reading,  as  illustrated  in  his  history.  Very  rare 
books  by  French  and  British  travelers,  American  books 
inaccessible  except  in  the  largest  libraries,  and  docu- 
ments, diaries,  letters,  etc.,  all  were  grist  to  his  mill. 
His  exploration  of  Southern  archives  and  literature 
was  very  deep,  and  he  expressed  to  me  in  a  letter  pub- 
lished last  Sunday  his  own  astonishment  that  it  was  so 
rich  and  varied. 

Notwithstanding  all  this  I  soon  became  convinced 
that  there  was  a  body  of  very  important  source  ma- 
terial that  he  had  never  seen  or  heard  of.  He  wrote 
under  the  impression  that  the  South  was  a  homogene- 
ous people;  that  there  were  no  important  divisions 
among  us ;  that  certain  newspapers  expressed  our  mind 
on  public  matters  and  social  questions;  whereas  the 
very  reverse  of  all  this  was  true,  and  is  still  true. 

In  one  of  his  masterful  essays  the  great  senator 
makes  a  plea  for  endowment  of  research  in  scholarship 
in  history,  taking  the  position  that  it  was  too  costly  an 
undertaking  for  any  individual  to  bear.  James  Ford 
Rhodes,  the  Ohio  historian,  brother-in-law  of  Mark 
Hanna,  was  a  multi-millionaire,  and  in  gathering  ma- 
terial for  his  able  history  of  the  United  States  from 
1850  to  the  present  employed  a  large  number  of  lesser 
men  to  explore  archives  and  read  old  letters  and  news- 
paper files,  etc.,  and  collate  his  data.  This  was  what 
Beveridge  had  in  mind,  and  if  you  weigh  it  but  a  mo- 
ment you  must  see  the  importance  of  his  position,  which 
is  the  correct  plan.    The  job  is  too  big  for  one  man. 

I  found  in  the  immense  number  of  footnotes  in  the 

25 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

Lincoln  quotations  from  the  Charleston  Mercury  and 
the  New  Orleans  Picayune,  for  instance,  and  not  a 
single  one  from  the  Charleston  Courier  and  the  New 
Orleans  Delta.  Neither  the  Mercury  nor  the  Picayune 
gives  a  full  and  corect  viewpoint  of  Southern  opinion 
on  the  great  political  questions  of  that  day,  but  rather 
a  one-sided  view,  and  the  complete  picture  can  only 
be  obtained  by  digesting  the  editorials  in  the  Courier 
and  Delta  along  with  those  Beveridge  quotes  from,  be- 
cause some  of  those  papers  were  Whig  and  Union  and 
some  Democrat  and  Secession.  No  where  does  Bev- 
eridge quote  from  the  old  Mobile  Register,  edited  by 
John  Forsyth,  probably  the  most  famous  Southern 
editor  of  the  ante-bellum  era.  He  was  really  a  great 
statesman  as  well  as  a  great  editor.  Beveridge  had  never 
heard  of  him.  Nor  did  I  find  any  quotations  from 
Senator  Lamar's  great  rival  in  Mississippi,  the  distin- 
guished editor  of  the  Jackson  Clarion.  I  could  mention 
others,  but  single  out  the  Titans. 

A  history  of  the  Southern  ante-bellum  mind  with- 
out a  history  of  the  Charleston  Courier  would  be  in- 
complete, for  the  Courier  was  the  most  conservative 
paper  in  the  most  Radical  State  in  the  South.  For  60 
long  years  and  until  his  death  in  1862,  it  had  been 
owned  and  edited  by  the  first  practical  journalist  in 
the  South,  a  man  of  positive  genius,  who  trained  the 
elder  James  Gordon  Bennett  in  journalism  and  was 
thereby  the  father  of  the  idea  which  made  the  New 
York  Herald  a  famous  paper.  This  great  editor  was  A. 
S.  Wellington,  of  Massachusetts  birth  and  rearing  and 
education.  In  the  Courier  he  opposed  Nullification,  he 
opposed  Secession  and  he  stood  for  the  Union  almost 
until  Fort  Sumter  was  fired  on.  When  the  issue  came 
he  went  boldly  with  his  State.  He  was  loved,  honored 
and  respected  by  Charleston.  It  should  not  be  sur- 
prising that  Beveridge  had  not  heard  of  Mr.  Willington. 

26 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

I  doubt  if  half  a  dozen  readers  of  this  article  ever  did. 
My  knowledge  of  him  came  from  Robert  Lathan,  the 
editor  of  The  Citizen,  who  has  but  lately  come  here 
from  the  old  Courier.  But  I  was  not  wholly  ignorant 
of  the  great  history  of  the  Courier,  and  I  knew  enough 
of  the  past  to  understand  that  in  every  city  and  State 
we  had  strong  Union  newspapers  as  well  as  strong 
Radical  newspapers.  So  it  did  not  take  a  sage  to  see 
that  the  quotations  from  the  Mercury  and  the  Picayune 
represented  only  one  class  of  our  people. 

Let  the  reader  not  forget  the  fact  that  Mr.  Wil- 
lington  was  a  Northern  man,  moulding  opinion  in  the 
South.  This  fact  will  come  up  again  in  this  cor- 
respondence. To  my  mind  it  is  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant facts  in  our  history,  and  one  of  the  most  neg- 
lected. 

On  March  28  I  wrote  Beveridge,  in  part  as  follows, 
giving  my  reaction  to  his  book : 

"My  present  impression  is  that  the  first  chapter 
of  Volume  II  while  in  the  main  an  exact  and  accurate 
statement  of  the  South's  position  with  regard  to  slavery 
and  the  abolition  movement,  lacks  something  which  it 
is  hard  for  me  to  define.  Of  course,  I  realize  that  you 
can  not,  as  stated  in  one  of  your  letters  to  me,  quote 
everything  or  discuss  everything  that  bears  on  that 
momentous  epoch  in  our  history;  but  the  tenderer  and 
gentler  side  of  the  relation  of  master  and  slave — a 
thing  that  the  Abolitionists  denied  ever  existed  and 
which  'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin'  clearly  leaves  the  impres- 
sion was  a  myth — is  not  evident  in  your  discussion  of 
that  phase  of  Southern  social  life.  The  'Uncle  Remus' 
books  of  Joel  Chandler  Harris ;  the  negro  tales  of  Harry 
Stillwell  Edwards;  the  poems  of  Irwin  Russell;  'Mars 
Chan  and  Other  Stories'  by  Thomas  Nelson  Page;  and 
a  host  of  such  literature  by  our  own  people  are  all  faith- 

27 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

ful  delineations  of  this  beautiful  relation  between 
master  and  slave,  but  it  finds  no  space  in  your  brilliant 
statement  of  conditions.  I  presume  you  will  reply  that 
because  it  is  ante-bellum  instead  of  post-bellum  litera- 
ture, it  could  not  be  used  as  historical  matter. 

"My  only  purpose  in  bringing  this  to  your  attention 
is  that  you  may  reflect  on  it  and  see  if  it  does  not  have 
a  place  in  softening  the  asperities  which  the  slavery 
issue  aroused  against  the  Southern  people.  While  these 
stories  were  written  after  the  war,  they  are  a  true 
delineation  of  conditions  that  existed  during  slavery 
times ;  and  the  mere  fact  of  their  vitality  and  that  they 
are  read  today  not  only  throughout  America  but 
throughout  Europe  is  to  be  accepted  as  a  testimony  to 
their  veracity." 

Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  history  of  the 
Abolition  movement  know  that  over  and  over  again  the 
Southern  people  were  denounced  as  barbarians  and 
brutes  no  higher  in  the  scale  of  humanity  than  their 
slaves.  Even  the  English  woman,  Harriet  Martineau, 
wrote  about  our  women  that  "the  mistress  of  the  planta- 
tion is  the  chief  slave  in  the  harem."  The  South  justly 
contended  that  it  was  elevating  the  slave  from  savagery 
and  Christianizing  him;  and  so  on.  With  this  in  mind, 
and  still  reading  the  chapter  on  the  South,  I  asked 
Beveridge: 

"In  all  of  the  enormous  reading  you  have  done  in 
gathering  materials  for  your  history,  I  wonder  if,  by 
chance,  you  have  come  across  the  history  of  the  or- 
ganized movements  for  the  Christianization  of  the 
slaves  of  the  South.  The  famous  Bishop  William  T. 
Capers  of  Charleston,  S.  C,  headed  this  movement  in 
the  Methodist  Church  before  the  Separation  in  1844  and 
continued  it  after  the  Separation,  also  directed  the  af- 
fairs of  the  Southern  Methodist  Church  in  promoting 

28 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

that  work.  My  own  father  was  a  missionary  to  the 
negroes,  and  in  his  regular  pastoral  work,  he  would 
visit  the  plantations  of  North  Alabama,  hold  services 
and  revivals  in  the  quarters,  marry  the  slaves,  baptize 
their  babies  and  bury  their  dead.  I  am  somewhat 
familiar  with  this  movement  in  my  own  church,  and 
presume  that  the  Baptists,  the  Presbyterians,  the  Epis- 
copalians and  even  the  Roman  Catholics  carried  on 
similar  movements  long  before  the  war." 

Dismissing  this  phase  of  our  history,  I  then  took  up 
the  question  of  the  attitude  of  the  Northern  people 
who  had  settled  in  the  South  before  the  War,  their  rela- 
tion to  slavery  and  Secession  and  their  course  once  war 
came.    The  letter  goes  on : 

"I  have  not  read  deep  enough  into  your  book  to 
know  whether  you  have  examined  this  phase  of  our 
Southern  social  life  before  the  War.  Most  of  the  men 
who  came  South  from  the  North  and  cast  in  their  lot 
with  the  Southern  people  were  the  most  intense  South- 
erners we  had  among  us.  There  was  a  Colonel  Wood- 
ward, who  raised  a  regiment  in  Kentucky  and  who 
himself  was  one  of  the  most  brilliant  partisans  in  the 
Confederate  army,  though  himself  a  native  of  New 
England.  (Colonel  Woodward  was  a  Yankee  school 
teacher,  having  a  boy's  school  at  Hopkinsville,  so  I 
have  been  informed,  and  he  took  his  students  into  the 
Confederate  army.)  There  was  Colonel  John  R.  Fel- 
lows, of  New  York,  the  great  Democratic  orator,  who 
was  the  colonel  of  a  regiment  he  raised  in  Arkansas. 
There  was  S.  S.  Prentiss,  the  great  Mississippi  orator, 
a  native  of  Maine,  whose  life  and  speeches  I  feel  sure 
you  have  examined.  There  was  Joshua  Soule,  the  great 
Methodist  Bishop  who  was  Senior  Bishop  of  the  Church 
when  it  divided  into  two  units  in  1844,  the  author  of 
the  constitution  of  American  Episcopal  Methodism,  a 

29 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

native  of  Maine,  who  refused  ordination  as  Bishop  when 
the  General  Conference  violated  the  constitution  and 
tried  to  assume  the  authority  of  the  Episcopacy,  who, 
when  the  controversy  over  Bishop  Andrew  arose,  went 
with  the  Southern  wing  of  the  Church,  and  died  Senior 
Bishop  of  the  Southern  Church.  We  had  no  more  in- 
tense partisan  than  Bishop  Soule.  There  was  that 
group  of  famous  educators  who,  for  more  than  fifty 
years,  controlled  the  destinies  of  Emory  and  Henry  Col- 
lege in  Virginia,  all  of  them  New  England  Yankees,  edu- 
cated at  the  great  Wesleyan  University  at  Middletown, 
Conn., — E.  E.  Wiley,  for  half  a  century  president; 
Lamund  Longley,  and  others.  They  were  among  the 
most  intense  partisans  among  us.  They  gave  their  sons 
to  the  Confederate  armies. 

"If  you  could  gather  material  about  these  men  and 
their  times,  you  will  probably  find  that  these  Northern 
men  moulded  the  opinion  of  Southern  men,  and  were 
more  interest  in  their  Southern  sympathies,  their 
hatred  of  Abolition  and  Abolitionists  than  any  other 
men  among  us." 

This  will  be  referred  to  again  and  again  in  this 
correspondence,  and  it  will  be  noted  that  it  made  a 
very  deep  impression  on  Beveridge's  mind.  His  last 
letter  to  me  is  the  most  eager  I  got  from  him,  and  in 
it  he  gives  me  a  commission,  almost  implores  me  to 
explore  the  matter  fully  for  him  and  get  him  the  data, 
which  I  was  doing  when  his  untimely  death  ended  it. 
His  last  letter  to  me,  written  the  day  before  he  was 
stricken,  is  probably  the  last  he  ever  wrote. 

Numerous  quotations  in  footnotes  in  Beveridge's 
Lincoln  from  Abolition  writers  and  orators  incensed 
me,  not  against  Beveridge  to  be  sure,  and  that  is  the 
genesis  of  this  paragraph  in  this  long  letter  of  mine 
I  am  quoting  from : 

"There  is  another  phase  of  our  history  which   I 

30 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

offer  for  your  consideration.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the 
South,  which  from  Colonial  times  to  the  Civil  War  and 
through  the  Civil  War  period,  produced  a  host  of  great 
men,  owes  this  to  environment  or  education.  These 
men  represented  a  civilization  and  a  general  run  of 
mankind  of  the  very  highest  type,  intellectually,  moral- 
ly and  socially.  I  have  never  seen  this  thing  worked 
out  but  I  have  discussed  it  with  much  older  men,  bet- 
ter informed  than  I,  who  have  advanced  the  opinion  that 
because  of  their  duties  as  mistresses  of  the  plantations, 
caring  for  the  needs  of  the  slaves  and  their  own 
families,  supervising  the  education  of  their  children 
and  otherwise  having  their  intellectual  faculties 
aroused,  the  women  of  the  South  developed  along  prac- 
tical and  intellectual  lines  a  strength  of  character  that 
few  women  have  ever  possessed ;  and  from  such  a  wom- 
anhood sprang  the  men  who  moulded  the  destinies  of 
the  South,  who  commanded  her  armies,  and  who  formed 
her  brave  legions." 

As  Beveridge  and  I  were  both  Methodists,  I  was 
keenly  interested  in  what  he  had  to  say  about  the 
Separation  of  1844,  which,  in  my  opinion,  was  the 
actual  beginning  of  the  Civil  War.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
he  did  not  appreciate  this  fact  when  writing  his  book, 
and  his  sources  seemed  to  me  so  intensely  one-sided  and 
unfair  to  the  Southern  Church  that  I  set  myself  to  cor- 
rect that,  as  far  as  possible.  It  will  be  seen  in  his  reply 
to  this  letter  that  he  paid  me  a  most  unusual  compli- 
ment in  asking  me  to  write  this  section  for  him,  not  that 
he  probably  would  use  what  I  wrote  but  he  was  so 
honest  and  so  fair  he  wanted  the  truth  alone.  This  will 
explain  this  concluding  quotation  from  my  letter: 

"I  do  not  agree  with  you  in  your  statement,  and 
history  will  not  agree  with  you,  that  the  Separation  of 
the  Methodist  Church  in  1844  was  a  Schism.     I  was 

31 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

afraid  you  would  state  that  in  your  book,  and  that  is 
why  I  sent  you  Doctor  Harrison's  great  discussion  of 
the  case.  There  is  no  parent  Methodism  in  America. 
The  Northern  Church  separated  from  the  Southern 
Church  just  as  the  Southern  Church  separated  from 
the  Northern  Church,  and  the  U.  S.  Supreme  Court 
so  decided  in  the  Methodist  Property  Case.  I  think  your 
brief  reference  to  this  historic  division  of  American 
Methodism  will  give  offense  to  Southern  Methodists, 
and,  because  the  record  is  so  plain,  I  am  sure  you  do 
not  wish  to  needlessly  give  offense  in  any  way.  All  we 
ever  ask  is  the  truth,  and  if  it  hurts  us  we  must  stand 
it.,, 

On  April  2,  Beveridge  replied  to  this  lengthy  letter 
from  his  home  in  Indianapolis.  Although  a  very  sick 
man  he  took  the  trouble  to  write  me  in  long  hand  the 
following  treasured  reply: 

"Dear  Mr.  Barbee: 

"Thanks  for  your  letter  of  March  28.  It  is  helpful. 

"Take  all  the  time  you  want  to  read  the  mss.  If 
you  finish  by  May  15,  send  it  to  me  here — after  that 
at  Beverly  Farms,  Mass. 

"Write  on  the  margin  all  you  please,  and  sign 
on  each  note  'Barbee'  so  that  I'll  know  who  wrote  it. 
I  have  a  great  many  copies. 

"If  you  will  glance  over  Chap.  1  again  I  think 
you'll  see  that  I  already  have  the  feature  of  slavery  you 
point  out — perhaps  too  much  so  for  good  effect.  Over- 
statement usually  defeats  itself,  and,  besides,  is  bad  art. 

"Also,  I  must  not  be,  nor  must  any  reader  think 
that  I  am,  a  partisan  of  either  side.  I  am  trying'  to  be 
a  dramatist,  not  a  propagandist.  I  explained  all  that 
in  my  article  last  October  in  The  Saturday  Evening 
Post.     'The  Making  of  a  Book.' 

"Your  point  about  the  great  men  and  noble  women 

32 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

produced  by  the  South  is  sound,  and  well  stated.  I 
thought  I  had  made  that  clear,  but  if  I  have  not,  I 
shall  do  so  in  the  final  revision. 

"Thanks,  too,  for  the  names  of  men  of  Northern 
birth  and  bringing  up  who  took  the  side  of  the  South 
and  fought  for  her.  Give  me  all  you  can  find.  Judge 
Dickinson  (Sec.  War  under  Taft)  has  furnished  me  a 
list  of  Northern  men  who  were  Southern  officers. 

"I  am  especially  obliged  for  your  comment  on  the 
Methodist  Church,  and  shall  change  the  text  so  as  to 
make  it  exactly  accurate.  You  of  course  know  that 
Prof.  Hull's  book  is  a  fine,  up-to-date  treatment  of 
the  whole  subject — scholarly,  and  so  without  bias. 

"I  should  be  glad  if  you  would  put  your  under- 
standing of  it  in  a  short,  plain  paragraph,  and  send 
it  to  me.  My  hardest  job  is  selection  and  condensation. 
The  stage  is  so  crowded,  the  incidents  so  many  and  the 
play  moves  so  fast  that  I  must  save  all  the  words  I  can. 

"Thank  you  once  more,  dear  Mr.  Barbee,  for  your 
interest,  and  for  the  help  you  are  giving  me.  Write 
me  whenever  you  feel  like  it — your  letters  will  always 
be  welcome. 

"With  best  wishes, 

"Faithfully  yours 
"ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE 

In  the  next  installment  the  correspondence  has  to 
do  with  a  rather  famous  Northern  history  of  the  War 
that  has  been  buried  for  many  years  because  it  tells 
some  very  unpleasant  truths  about  Lincoln  and  the 
Republican  party.     It  will  be  printed  May  22. 


33 


ARTICLE  IV. 

MY  LETTER  of  April  1  notified  Beveridge  that 
"I  am  mailing  you  an  original  copy  of  Horton's 
History."  This  copy  was  sent  me  by  the  owner,  Miss 
Mary  D.  Carter  of  Upperville,  Va.,  who  has  brought  out 
a  revised  edition,  which  may  be  purchased  from  The 
Southern  Publishing  Company  of  Dallas  Tex.,  for  one 
dollar  and  twenty-five  cents.  Every  one  interested  in 
history  should  read  this  astounding  book. 

Horton  was  a  New  York  editor  and  publisher,  who 
opposed  the  war  and  for  his  courage  suffered  the  loss 
of  his  newspaper.  It  was  one  of  many  Democratic 
newspapers  that  Lincoln  and  the  Republican  party  sup- 
pressed during  the  war.  His  history,  written  in  1866 
and  addressed  to  the  youth  of  America,  is  one  of  the 
most  startling  books  I  have  ever  read.  Horton  places 
the  responsibility  for  the  war  directly  on  Abraham  Lin- 
coln and  proves  from  the  record  that  Lincoln  and 
Seward  actually  forced  hostilities  by  an  overt 
act  at  Fort  Sumter  before  Beauregard  ever  fired  on  that 
fortress.  That  chapter  alone  is  one  of  the  most 
astounding  in  its  revelations  that  I  have  come  across 
in  a  wide  reading  of  the  literature  of  the  war.  Beveridge 
himself  was  evidently  shocked  out  of  his  previously 
formed  position  with  regard  to  Lincoln  and  the  war  by 
this  book,  as  will  appear  later. 

Continuing  this  letter  said  :  > 

"Are  you  familiar  with  the  writings  of  the  cele- 
brated John  Forsyth,  who  was  for  so  many  years  editor 
of  the  Mobile  Register,  before  the  war,  and  who  was 

34 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

ambassador  to  Mexico?  I  think  he  probably  more  truly 
represents  the  ante-bellum  viewpoint  of  the  extreme 
coastal  states  than  the  New  Orleans  Picayune  would. 
I  note  that  you  quote  very  freely  from  the  Picayune. 

"I  have  somewhere  in  my  library  a  volume  of 
sketches  of  ante-bellum  and  post-bellum  life  in  Mobile, 
written  by  Dr.  Erwin  Craighead,  who  has  been  for  fifty 
years  editor  of  the  Mobile  Register,  and  still  occupies 
that  position.  He  was  an  intimate  friend  of  T.  C.  De- 
Leon,  whose  'Beaux  and  Belles'  you  quote  from.  If  you 
wish  to  see  this  book,  I  will  gladly  send  it  to  you,  be- 
cause I  think  it  will  clear  up  in  your  mind  the  im- 
portance or  lack  of  importance  which  you  attach  to 
DeLeon  and  probably  to  some  others  you  may  have 
quoted  from  in  parts  of  your  book  I  have  not  seen.  You 
will  be  very  much  interested,  I  know,  in  the  ante- 
bellum civilization  of  Mobile  and  in  Dr.  Craighead's 
story  of  Madame  LeVert,  who  had  a  salon  in  Mobile 
before  the  war  which  was  patterned  very  much  after 
such  institutions  in  Paris  in  the  golden  days. 

"Doctor  Craighead  is  a  native  of  Nashville,  Tenn., 
and,  I  think,  a  relative  of  my  father's  old  friend,  Judge 
J.  M.  Dickinson,  whom  you  know  so  well.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  the  Sorbonne  in  Paris,  during  the  Civil  War, 
where  he  was  a  classmate  of  a  number  of  celebrated 
men,  among  whom  was  Wu  Ting  Fang,  the  witty  Celes- 
tial whom  you  probably  knew  as  ambassador  from 
China  to  America,  I  know  Dr.  Craighead  so  intimately, 
and  know  that  he  is  such  a  thorough  scholar,  that  I 
believe  you  could  rely  upon  any  statement  he  makes  in 
his  book.    He  is  a  veritable  mine  of  history." 

Skipping  some  matter  that  is  not  wholly  relevant 
now,  the  letter  proceeds : 

"I  have  practically  finished  reading  all  the  chap- 
ters you  sent  me,  except  the  last  one,  and  shall  re-read 

35 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

Chapter  1 ;  for  I  want  to  make  another  survey  of  that 
Chapter  before  giving  you  my  final  reaction  to  it.  My 
present  impression  is  that  it  lacks  the  fire  and  enthu- 
siasm which  are  to  be  found  in  the  chapter  on  Kansas, 
for  instance,  and  in  that  on  the  origin  of  the  Republican 
party — in  all  the  other  chapters,  in  fact. 

"One  thing  is  running  deeply  through  my  mind.  It 
may  have  no  place  in  your  history.  While  Kansas  was 
organizing  and  Lincoln  was  changing  his  politics  and 
telling  his  people  that  the  South  SHANT  leave  the 
Union,  what  was  Jefferson  Davis  doing?  Was  he  really 
then  plotting  disunion?  Will  your  picture  be  com- 
plete without  a  searching,  truthful  statement  and  analy- 
sis of  that  great  man's  actions  and  thoughts  during 
that  critical  period?  You  obviously  have  great  admira- 
tion for  Stephen  A.  Douglas — and  justly  so.  What 
were  he  and  other  Northern  Democrats  doing  in  con- 
junction with  Southern  leaders  to  meet  the  crisis  and 
either  disrupt  or  save  the  Union?  I  have  not  seen  a 
discussion  of  this  yet  and  maybe  shall  reach  it  in  the 
chapter  yet  to  be  read/' 

Before  this  letter  reached  Beveridge  he  wrote  me 
from  his  home  in  Indianapolis  on  April  4,  as  follows: 

"Dear  Mr.  Barbee: 

"I  have  this  morning  received  from  you  Miss 
Carter's  volume  of  Horton's  'Youth's  History  of  the 
Great  Civil  War/  etc.,  N.  Y.  1867.  Thank  you  so  much 
for  letting  me  have  it.  I  also  have  a  letter4  from  Miss 
Carter  and  am  thanking  her  by  this  mail. 

"I  shall  return  it  within  a  day  or  two,  because  I  find 
that  the  Boston  Public  Library  has  a  copy,  and 
especially  in  view  of  the  fact  that  everything  after 
Lincoln's  election  will  go  into  Volume  III.  The  book 
is  of  great  importance,  although,  of  course,  it  would  be 

36 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

more  valuable  if  Mr.  Horton  had  cited  authorities.  How- 
ever, that  was  not  done  very  much,  if  at  all,  in  those 
days,  and  is  not  done  even  now  in  school  histories. 

Thank  you  again,  dear  Mr.  Barbee,  for  your 
courtesy,  and  believe  me  with  every  good  wish,  always 

"Faithfully, 
"ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE." 

Then  came  the  following  postscript  in  the  sena- 
tor's well-known  scrawling  handscript: 

"P.  S.  The  first  two  vols,  will  be  published  in  the 
fall  of  1928.  The  last  two  vols,  treating  of  events  after 
Lincoln  became  President-elect  and  President,  will  re- 
quire from  three  to  five  years  of  hard  and  continuous 
work — so  they  can't  possibly  be  ready  before  1932  at  the 
earliest." 

On  April  7  Beveridge  replied  to  my  last  letter  as 
follows : 

"Dear  Mr.  Barbee: 

"Thank  you  very  much  for  your  nice  letter  of 
April  1.  I  am  no  end  interested  in  what  you  say  about 
the  writings  of  John  Forsyth  and  the  book  of  Dr.  Craig- 
head. I  shall  get  them  from  the  Boston  Public  Library 
as  soon  as  I  return  to  Beverly  Farms. 

"I  am  more  than  pleased  that  you  did  not  find 
'Fire'  in  Chapter  I  and  sorry  that  you  find  it  anywhere. 
'Fire'  is  all  right  for  the  advocate,  but  all  wrong  for 
the  judge.  The  trouble  with  biography  and  history,  too, 
is  that  there  has  been  altogether  too  much  'fire'  in  it 
and  too  little  fact  and  sound  judgement. 

"It  is  exactly  that  thing  that  I  have  tried  hard  to 
avoid.  As  I  have  written  you,  I  should  not  have  any- 
body who  may  do  me  that  honor  to  read   my  book, 

37 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

think  that  I  had  any  prejudice  whatever;  and  I  should 
feel  unworthy  if  I    discovered  a  trace  of  it  in  me. 

"With  best  wishes 

"Faithfully 

"ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE." 

"P.  S.  I  am  more  interested  than  in  anything  else 
that  I  have  discovered,  by  the  statements  (p.  382)  in 
Horton's  History  that  the  story  of  Mr.  Davis's  at- 
tempted escape  in,  woman's  clothes  is  a  falsehood. 
Here  in  the  North,  all  of  us  have  been  told  that  story 
from  infancy,  and  all  of  us  have  believed  it.  Certainly 
I  did  until  now. 

"But  it  has  given  me  a  great  deal  of  trouble  because 
it  did  not  fit  the  character  of  Mr.  Davis  as  revealed  by 
everything  he  ever  said  and  did  throughout  his  whole 
life.  So  the  fact  that  it  was  a  falsehood  is  of  the  first 
importance. 

"But,  unfortunately,  Horton  does  not  give  the 
sources  for  his  statement,  but  contents  himself  with 
saying  merely  that  it  was  a  lie.  You  realize  that  is 
not  enough.  So  can  you  give  me  any  original  source 
material  on  this  most  important  matter.  I  shall  be 
greatly  obliged  to  you  if  you  can  finish  that  data." 

My  worthy  friend,  Dr.  Archibald  Henderson  of 
the  University  of  North  Carolina,  wrote  me  that  Bev- 
eridge  would  get  a  very  thorough  course  on  Southern 
history  at  my  hands,  which,  of  course,  was  an  un- 
deserved compliment.  But  it  really  was  an  interesting 
excursion,  and  because  of  my  very  great  desire,  as  I 
wrote  Beveridge,  to  help  the  South  get  a  square  deal 
and  help  him  find  the  truth,  I  had  to  exercise  all  the 
patience  and  tact  at  my  command  in  this  cor- 
respondence. / 

Anyone  who  has  read  his  great  work  on  John 
Marshall  knows  that  Beveridge  was  intensely  prejudic- 

38 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

ed  against  Thomas  Jefferson  (a  fact  he  admitted  to 
Lawrence  Abbott)  and  that  the  book  at  times  is  full  of 
"fire."  His  enthusiasm  for  Marshall  runs  away  with 
him  at  times  and  beclouds  his  judgement.  So  I  was 
not  alarmed  at  having  drawn  his  "fire"  with  my  sharp 
comment  on  his  chapter  dealing  with  the  South  which 
often  moves  with  leaden  feet  because  it  is  so  meticulous- 
ly accurate  and  just  and  so  lacking  in  the  high 
lights  that  mark  all  the  other  chapters. 

It  was  amazing  to  learn  that  Beveridge,  before 
beginning  to  write  his  Lincoln,  had  not  even  read  the 
official  life  of  Jefferson  Davis,  that  written  by  his 
widow,  which  incorporates  a  great  deal  of  autobio- 
graphy. And  furthermore  it  seemed  to  me  that  the 
great  senator  was  a  careless  reader,  for  Horton  on  the 
very  page  that  gives  the  story  of  the  capture  of  Jef- 
ferson Davis  cites  as  his  authority  for  the  disproof  of 
the  lie,  that  Mr.  Davis  was  trying  to  escape  in  woman's 
clothes,  the  official  report  of  Col.  B.  D.  Pritchard,  the 
Michigan  officer  who  effected  the  capture.  While  I 
do  not  know  it  to  be  a  fact,  it  would  seem  that  Bev- 
eridge had  not  examined  closely  the  official  records  of 
the  war  which  were  published  by  the  United  States 
government.  These  probably  he  expected  to  examine 
before  writing  the  last  two  volumes  of  this  book. 

On  April  7  I  wrote  him  stating  that  I  had  com- 
pleted the  reading  of  his  manuscript  and  was  return- 
ing it  to  him.  I  informed  him  that  I  had  written  widely 
over  the  South  to  personal  friends  who  were  State 
Archivists,  to  historians,  to  Bishops  of  my  church,  and 
to  others  "for  information1  about  the  Northern  men  who 
lived  in  the  South  before  the  war  and  who  cast  in  their 
lot  with  the  South  during  the  war."  I  also  said :  "I  will 
work  out  a  paragraph  on  the  division  of  the  Methodist 
Church  and  send  it  to  you.     That  page  in  your  manu- 

39 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

script  struck  me  as  being  subject  to  very  critical 
revision,  because  it  is  not  an  accurate  statement  of 
that  momentous  event." 

On  April  9  Beveridge  wrote  we  as  follows : 

"Dear  Mr.  Barbee: 

"Thank  you  very  much  for  the  mss.  which  has  been 
received.  I  shall  consider  with  care  all  your  sugges- 
tions; and  of  course,  I  shall  get  the  additional  books  of 
which  you  make  mention,  before  the  final  revision  is 
done. 

"Thank  you  so  much  for  taking  the  trouble  to  get 
the  list  of  Northern  men  who  fought  on  the  Southern 
side;  and  thank  you,  too,  for  the  paragraph  which  you 
say  you  will  prepare  on  the  split  in  the  Methodist 
Church.  That  point,  as  well  as  every  other  point,  must 
be  made  absolutely  accurate. 

"With  best  wishes 
"Faithfully, 
"ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE." 

"P.  S.  I  am  returning  under  separate  cover  Miss 
Carter's  volume  of  Horton's  History  which  you  so 
courteously  let  me  have.  As  I  wrote  you,  the  Boston 
Public  Library  writes  me  that  there  is  a  copy  there 
and  I  shall  get  it." 

On  April  11  I  wrote  Beveridge  another  long  let- 
ter, enclosing  him  a  long  list  of  officers  and  high  rank 
in  the  Confederate  army  who  were  of  Northern  birth. 
They  were  all  Major  Generals,  and  Brigadier  Generals, 
led  by  the  distinguished  hero  of  Vicksburg,  General 
John  C.  Pemberton.  This  list  was  sent  me  by  my  dear 
friend,  Mrs.  Marie  Bankhead  Owen,  State  Archivist  of 
Alabama.  "I  realize  the  importance  of  a  study  of  this 
phase  of  that  great  conflict,  and  am  glad  you  are  en- 

40 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

tering  upon  it,''  I  wrote. 

Under  separate  cover  I  had  sent  him  the  two  im- 
portant reviews  published  by  the  University  of  North 
Carolina  and  Duke  University  and  relative  to  them 
stated :  "These  reviews  from  time  to  time  have  been 
filled  with  an  immense  amount  of  source  material  that 
will  shed  light  on  the  work  you  are  writing.  For  in- 
stance, one  of  the  last  issues  of  the  Duke  University  Re- 
view (the  South-Atlantic)  contained  a  very  elaborate 
article  on  the  burning  of  Columbia  by  Sherman,  with 
a  long  list  of  documentary  evidence  that  was  most  in- 
teresting." 

I  also  sent  him  the  recently  published  "Old  Days 
at  Chapel  Hill,"  which  I  informed  him  was  "written  by 
a  woman  born  in  England  but  who  lived  many  years 
in  North  Carolina  and  Alabama  before  and  after  the 
war,  and  then  in  Boston."  This  statement  was  inac- 
curate, for  Mrs.  Spencer  was  born  in  New  York,  her 
father,  however,  being  an  Englishman.  "This  book,"  I 
wrote,  "will  give  you  a  much  'prettier'  picture  of  our 
dear  Southland  than  you  have  drawn  from  some  of 
your  sources." 

I  did  not  feel  inclined  to  c^l  Beveridge's  attention 
to  his  strange  oversight  in  the  Horton  History  to  which 
reference  is  made  above,  but  gave  him  a  taste  of  Mrs. 
Spencer's  diary  as  follows:  "You  will  note  that  Mrs. 
Spencer,  on  page  89  of  her  book,  quoting  from  her  diary 
of  June  4,  1865,  says:  'President  Davis — our  soldier 
president  as  the  papers  delighted  to  call  him  four  years 
ago,  might  be  taken  in  his  wife's  clothes  and  carried  a 
prisoner  to  Washington.'  But  on  page  114  of  her  book, 
again  quoting  from  her  diary,  July  1865,  says:  T  was 
greatly  rejoiced  to  get  from  him  (Gov.  Swain  of  North 
Carolina,  who  had  just  returned  from  Washington)  an 
emphatic  denial  of  the  story  of  President  Davis'  dis- 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

guise  in  his  wife's  clothes,  Gov.  Swain  was  with  two 
Yankee  generals  who  were  in  Georgia  at  the  time,  and 
they  both  declared  that  President  Davis  was  manly, 
dignified,  and  impressive  in  the  highest  degree.  The 
only  color  for  the  story  of  his  disguise  was  that  he 
had  thrown  across  his  shoulders  an  india  rubber  over- 
coat, perhaps  of  his  wife's,  to  shield  him  from  the  rain." 

I  shall  have  occasion  to  return  to  this  Davis  inci- 
dent again  before  this  correspondence  is  ended,  but  I 
could  not  resist  the  opportunity  to  tease  Beveridge 
with  this  statement :  "The  amazing  falsehood  has  reach- 
ed the  estate  of  a  myth,  and  I  am  more  than  astounded 
that  it  should  persist  after  60  years  of  authorative  dis- 
proof. I  think  I  can  put  my  hand  on  official  docu- 
ments (reprints  of  them)  for  you.  Does  not  Mr.  Davis 
give  them  in  his  'Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Confederacy?' 
I  suppose  you  have  read  that  book  with  great  care." 

In  concluding  this  letter  I  returned  to  the  parsons 
and  laid  this  proposition  before  Beveridge : 

"Do  you  think  you  attach  enough  importance  to 
the  religious  warfare  made  on  the  South  before  the 
war.  during  the  war  and  after  the  war?  Dr.  Bledsoe, 
who  was  indisputably  the  ablest  thinker  and  scholar 
among  us,  raises  the  question  as  to  whether  the  war 
was  not  a  war  of  Atheism  in  the  North  against 
Christianity  in  the  South,  and  I  think  you  will  find  this 
discussed  in  several  articles  in  the  Southern  Review. 
It  is  certain  that  the  most  energetic  propagandists 
against  slavery  and  the  South  were  Northern  preachers. 
I  believe  but  for  them  Abolition  would  never  have  made 
the  headway  it  did.  They  were  certainly  most  bitter 
against  the  South,  and  much  of  their  bitterness  grew 
out  of  the  division  in  our  church  in  1844,  with  the  sub- 
sequent lawsuit  over  a  division  of  the  community  funds 
of  the  church.    You  know  how  lawsuits  tend  to  create 

42 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

feuds.  It  is  also  certain  that  the  preachers  overrode 
the  politicians  after  the  surrender  and  were  a  most  im- 
portant factor  in  the  horrible  Reconstruction  acts.  Did 
it  ever  occur  to  you  that  much  of  the  hatred  spewed  on 
Chief  Justice  Taney  (for  the  Dred  Scott  decision)  or- 
iginated in  the  fact  that  HE  wrote  the  decision  in  the 
Methodist  Property  Case? 

"I  would  like  to  have  you  investigate  this  whole 
matter  and  see  if  it  does  not  deserve  more  than  one 
paragraph  in  your  Lincoln.  It  will  be  the  hardest  chap- 
ter for  you  to  write,  because  you,  being  a  Northern 
Methodist,  will  have  to  divest  your  mind  of  the  preju- 
dices of  two  generations  and  more." 

This  epistle  closed  with  the  following  curious  in- 
cident about  the  author  of  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin :"  "After 
the  war  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  moved  to  Lake  City, 
Fla.,  and  built  a  beautiful  home.  She  gave  receptions 
to  which  she  invited  the  white  people  along  with  the 
negroes  and  some  Indians.  Naturally  this  was  very 
obnoxious  to  the  white  people,  and  none  of  them  at- 
tended her  receptions.  After  a  while  Mrs.  Stowe  be- 
gan to  miss  her  silverware,  her  bed  linen,  and  other 
household  goods,  and  discovering  that  the  negroes  had 
stolen  it  she  became  what  is  popularly  called  down  here 
a  'nigger  hater'  of  the  most  malignant  type  and  told 
some  of  her  neighbors :  'If  I  had  lived  among  the  South- 
ern people  before  the  war  I  would  never  have  written 
'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.'  " 

The  next  installment  will  conclude  this  interesting 
correspondence,  for  just  after  the  receipt  of  the  above 
letter  Beveridge  replied  on  April  13,  and  then  was 
stricken  and  died  in  a  few  days. 


43 


ARTICLE  V. 


IN  MY  LETTER  of  April  11,  I  informed  the  Senator 
that  I  was  mailing  him  a  number  of  documents,  books, 
pamphlets  and  papers  covering  various  phases  of 
Southern  history  which  would  be  an  aid  to  him  in  his 
study  of  conditions  in  the  South  preceding  the  War. 
Continuing  the  letter  says : 

"I  am  enclosing  a  list  of  Northern  men,  all  eminent 
preachers,  who  left  the  North  and  came  to  the  South 
after  the  Plan  of  Separation  in  the  Methodist  Church 
was  adopted  (in  1844).  These  men  figured  largely  in 
the  history  of  American  Episcopal  Methodism  and  later 
were  outstanding  men  in  Southern  Methodism."  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  these  Northern  men  actually  typed 
Southern  Methodism  and  were  among  the  most  intense 
Southerners  we  had.  To  give  the  readers  of  these  ar- 
ticles an  idea  of  the  full  importance  of  this  fact  in  our 
history  I  insert  here  a  list  of  some  of  these  great  North- 
ern Methodist  preachers  who  latetf  directed  the  move- 
ments of  Southern  Methodism : 

Joshua  Soule,  Senior  Bishop  of  the  Methodist 
Church,  later  Senior  Bishop  of  Southern  Methodism, 
A  native  of  Maine  and  residing  at  Lebanon,  Ohio,  in 
1844,  when  the  Separation  came.  Next  to  Bishop 
Asbury,  Joshua  Soule  is  the  outstanding  figure  in 
American  Methodism. 

Thomas  Osmond  Summers,  a  native  of  England, 
who  left  the  North  in  1844  and  went  with  the  Southern 
Church.  For  many  years  editor  of  the  official  organ 
of   Southern   Methodism   and   author   of   many   tracts 

44 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

and  books  on  Methodism. 

Ephriam  Emerson  Wiley,  a  native  of  Connecticut 
and  cousin  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  president  of 
Emory  and  Henry  College  in  Virginia  for  more  than 
half  a  century;  who  left  the  North  and  went  with  the 
South  and  gave  his  sons  to  the  Confederate  armies.  He 
educated  more  preachers  and  bishops,  lawyers,  doctors 
and  public  men  than  any  other  educator  in  the  South 
of  his  generation. 

C.  K.  Marshall,  who  founded  the  city  of  Vicksburg, 
Mississippi,  and  was  foremost  among  Mississippi 
Methodists  for  many  years. 

William  Winans,  of  Mississippi,  born  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, who  was  such  a  great  man  that  he  was  too  big 
to  be  elected  Bishop. 

H.  B.  Bascom,  of  New  York,  who  afterwards  be- 
came a  Bishop  in  the  Southern  Church,  and  the  most 
eloquent  preacher  of  his  day. 

Jefferson  Hamilton,  of  Massachusetts,  whose 
ministry  in  Alabama  is  even  now  remembered  fifty 
years  after  his  death,  and  who  should  have  been  elected 
a  Bishop. 

Edward  Stevenson,  once  Missionary  Secretary  and 
Assistant  Book  Agent  of  the  Northern  Church. 

William  W.  Redman,  of  Indiana,  whose  labors  were 
in  Missouri. 

Alex.  Martin,  of  Pennsylvania,  who  was  a  member 
of  the  First  General  Conference  of  Southern  Methodism 
which  met  in  1846. 

Juba  Estabrook,  born  in  Vermont,  and  went  from 
Ohio  to  Arkansas. 

John  C.  Johnson,  born  in  Pennsylvania,  and  labor- 
ed in  Arkansas. 

Chauncey  Richard,  born  in  Vermont,  and  worked 
in  Texas 

45 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

Edward  Love,  born  in  Ohio,  and  worked  in  Mis- 
sissippi. 

Simon  B.  Cameron,  born  in  Ohio,  and  worked  in 
Kentucky  and  Texas 

Louis  Garrett,  born  in  Pennsylvania,  presiding 
elder  of  the  Nashville  District  in  the  Tennessee  Con- 
ference. 

Ezra  Clarke  Thornton,  born  in  New  York,  member 
of  the  General  Conference  of  1854  and  often  a  presiding 
elder  in  West  Virginia. 

Benjamin  Crouch,  born  in  Delaware,  in  the  General 
Conference  from  1832  to  1854,  worked  in  Kentucky. 
His  son,  also  a  preacher,  was  killed  in  the  Confederate 
Army. 

Benjamin  F.  Wilson,  born  in  Ohio. 

John  Wesley  Hawkins,  born  in  Indiana. 

Henry  Wise  Bellman,  born  in  Pennsylvania  and 
worked  in  Virginia. 

Henry  Bass,  born  in  Connecticut  and  worked  in 
South  Carolina;  presiding  elder  there. 

Edward  Mortimer,  born  in  Philadelphia. 

Robert  T.  Nixon,  born  in  Pennsylvania. 

Charles  M.  Delano,  born  in  Maine  and  worked  in 
the  Indian  Territory. 

Henry  S.  Atmore,  born  in  Delaware,  came  South 
after  the  Separation  and  worked  in  Virginia. 

Aaron  Moore,  born  in  Ohio  and  worked  in  the 
Louisville  Conference. 

William  M.  Curtiss,  born  in  New  York  and  work- 
ed in  Mississippi,  delegate  to  the  General  Conference  in 
1832 ;  Agent  at  New  Orleans. 

Silas  Lee,  born  in  New  York,  worked  in  the  Louis- 
ville Conference. 

John  W.  Kinney,  born  in  Ohio,  pioneer  in  Texas. 

46 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

Daniel  Carl,  born  in  New  York,  worked  in  Texas. 

Samuel  Davies  Baldwin,  born  in  Ohio,  was  one  of 
the  greatest  men  in  the  Tennessee  Conference. 

David  Kinnear,  born  in  Pennsylvania,  worked  in 
Louisiana. 

Thomas  Berthlof,  born  in  New  York,  worked  in  the 
Indian  Mission  Conference. 

M.  R.  Anthony,  born  in  Ohio  and  worked  in  Mis- 
souri. 

David  Stanford,  born  in  Illinois. 

Peter  James,  born  in  Pennsylvania,  worked  in  Mis- 
sissippi. 

Elisha  Callaway,  born  in  Delaware,  and  worked  in 
Mississippi. 

John  R.  Hall,  born  in  Philadelphia  and  a  member  of 
the  Louisville  Convention  that  set  up  the  Southern 
Church;  also  of  General  Conferences  of  1846,  1850. 

Samuel  Dunwody,  born  in  Pennsylvania  and  one 
of  the  giants  of  1844 ;  worked  in  South  Carolina. 

This  list  is  by  no  means  exhaustive;  but  I  think 
it  is  sufficiently  long  to  be  most  impressive.  It  must 
not  forgotten  that  the  Abolition  Movement  and  the  poli- 
tical issues  were  sufficiently  strong  among  Northern 
Methodist  preachers  in  1844  to  even  then  adumbrate 
the  coming  of  the  Civil  War ;  and  that  these  strong  men, 
all  born  in  the  North,  and  some  of  them  the  greatest 
men  of  their  day,  should  leave  the  North,  their  ain 
countrie,  and  come  down  where  the  hated  and  brutal 
slave  owner  lived,  and  begin  life  all  over  again  among 
such  a  besotted  people,  is  not  without  its  eternal  signifi- 
cance. There  is  no  more  striking  fact  in  our  history 
than  the  coming  of  these  Methodist  preachers,  led  by 
their  great  Yankee  senior  Bishop,  to  the   South,   be- 

47 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

cause  a  great  wrong  had  been  done  this  section  by  the 
North  in  an  illegal  act  deposing  a  Bishop  who  was  as 
pure  and  good  a  man  as  ever  lived. 

Further  paragraphs  in  my  letter  analyse  the  sec- 
tion or  page  of  the  Lincoln  devoted  to  the  Separation 
in  1844  in  the  Methodist  Church.  This  has  already  been 
sufficiently  gone  into  in  other  letters  of  mine  giver  in 
this  series.  Had  Beveridge  lived  I  am  confident  he 
would  have  rewritten  that  part  of  his  book  so  as  to 
make  it  accurate.  As  it  now  stands  it  is  full  of  grave 
mis-statements  of  fact. 

The  letter  closed  with  this  brief  reference  to  the 
source  material  on  the  capture  of  Jefferson  Davis: 

"In  the  authoritative  life  of  Jefferson  Davis,  writ- 
ten by  his  wife,  I  find  a  chapter  of  a  score  or  more 
pages  written  by  Mr.  Davis  himself,  giving  the  account 
of  his  capture.  He  refers  to  the  narrative  of  Gen. 
John  H.  Reagan  and  others  of  his  entourage,  including 
that  of  his  negro  servant,  to  support  his  own  state- 
ments. I  had  supposed  that  you  had  read  this  book 
and  were  familiar  with  all  the  facts  regarding  Mr. 
Davis'  capture/' 

On  April  12  I  wrote  Beveridge  suggesting  a  new 
line  of  investigation  for  him,  one  that  has  been  sadly 
neglected  by  our  historians.    Here  it  is : 

"I  wonder  if  you  have  studied  the  influence  of 
French  colonies  in  the  South  on  the  development  of 
Southern  thought  and  civilization.  You  know  the  whole 
Southern  rim  of  our  country  is  dotted  with  French 
settlements,  beginning  at  Virginia  and  extending  into 
Texas.  Both  of  the  Carolinas  have  their  Beauforts, 
and  the  first  French  settlement  in  this  country  was 
at  Biloxi,  Miss.  Then  the  San  Domingo  negroes  were 
freed  and  rose  up  and  massacred  the  white  people,  the 
refugees  that  got  away  came  to  Mobile  and  proceeded 

48 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

up  the  Alabama  river,  where  they  settled.  After  Na- 
polon  met  his  Waterloo,  some  of  his  marshals  and  gen- 
erals and  their  soldiers  and  families  came  to  Alabama 
and  formed  a  large  colony  on  the  Alabama  river  where 
the  San  Domingo  settlers  had  taken  root.  From  that 
stock  have  come  many  of  the  foremost  people  in  the 
South. 

"Stanford  White,  whom  Harry  K.  Thaw  killed,  was 
wont  to  pay  an  annual  pilgrimage  to  Alabama  to  study 
Gaineswood,  which  he  said  was  'the  finest  country  home 
in  the  world/  designed  and  built  by  one  of  Napoleon's 
engineers.  White  also  said  that  the  portico  of  the  State 
Capitol  at  Montgomery,  neath  which  Mr.  Davis  took  the 
oath  of  office,  was  'the  most  perfect  example  of  Greek 
architecture'  he  ever  saw.  He  sketched  it  many  times 
and  would  linger  in  its  shadow  lovingly  for  days.  I  do 
not  know  who  designed  that  portico  but  think  it  was 
one  of  Napoleon's  Frenchies." 

I  break  into  this  letter  here  to  remark  that  a  study 
of  the  architecture  of  the  South  from  Colonial  times 
to  the  Civil  War  is  one  of  the  neglected  fields  of  historic 
survey.  It  will  show  that  in  palatial  homes  and  in  pub- 
lic buildings  as  well  as  in  college  groups,  the  South 
was  so  far  ahead  of  any  other  section  of  America  as  to 
lead  one  to  believe  that  most  of  the  culture  of  the  na- 
tion was  to  be  found  in  this  section.  Northern  his- 
torians have  over  and  over  again  said  of  us  that  we 
were  a  crude,  rude  people  without  education  or  cul- 
ture, when  the  reverse  is  true.  John  P.  Coleman,  one  of 
the  older  newspapermen  of  New  Orleans,  has  recently 
written  a  series  of  articles  on  the  old  homes  of  Louisiana 
and  also  some  of  the  public  buildings;  and  in  them  has 
shown  that  the  Galliers,  pere  et  fils,  who  designed  and 
built  many  of  these  homes,  were  the  foremost  architects 
in  America.    No  city  and  no  state  in  America  is  so  rich 

49 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

in  really  beautiful  and  enormously  costly  homes  as 
New  Orleans  and  Louisiana ;  and  not  far  behind  them 
are  some  of  the  other  States  of  the  South.  Who  that  has 
stood  in  front  of  the  City  Hall  in  New  Orleans  and 
studied  that  magnificent  Greek  temple  designed  by  one 
of  the  Galliers  has  not  thrilled'  at  its  exquisite  beauty. 

My  letter  then  makes  a  reference  to  Louisiana  and 
the  French  settlements  up  the  Mississippi  river  and 
the  posts  interior  in  Louisiana  and  Texas,  and  then  goes 
on :  "One  of  the  professors  of  Tulane  University  a  year 
or  two  ago  wrote  a  namazingly  interesting  book  on  the 
French  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  and  even  traced  the 
French  influence  to  the  settlements  in  Tennessee,  with 
their  forts  at  Nashville,  and  showed  how  it  later  in- 
fluenced Southern  thought. 

"It  has  occurred  to  me  that  your  background,  so 
far  as  the  South  is  concerned,  will  not  be  complete 
unless  you  take  into  consideration  the  religious  phasis 
and  the  French  phasis,  and  probably  some  others  that 
I  may  yet  have  the  boldness  to  bring  to  your  attention. 

"Consider  the  settlements  on  the  Alabama  river. 
It  was  but  a  day's  journey  from  those  settlements  in 
Marengo  county  at  Demopolis  and  Hohen — Linden  and 
other  towns  you  will  find  on  the  map,  to  Montgomery 
and  other  black  belt  counties  where  slaves  were  the 
thickest  and  whence  came  Yancey  and  other  firebrands 
of  the  Confederacy.  Did  the  French  refugees  from  San 
Domingo  influence  Yancey's  mind  and  the  minds  of  the 
more  conservative  English  and  Scotch  people  of  Ala- 
bama and  Mississippi  with  whom  they  came  in  con- 
tact? Did  that  connexion  and  the  whole  French  Catho- 
lic mind  have  any  influence  on  the  Constitutional  ques- 
tion of  a  strong  National  government? 

"I  haven't  studied  these  questions  because  I  haven't 
had  the  time  or  access  to  the  books.     They  should  be 

50 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

studied  if  one  is  to  get  an  accurate  picture  of  Southern 
life  and  manners  before  the  war." 

Senator  Beveridge's  last  letter  to  me,  written  from 
Indianapolis,  April  13,  was  dictated  the  day  before  he 
was  stricken  with  heart  disease,  which  soon  carried 
him  off.    It  follows: 

"Dear  Mr.  Barbee: 

"Thank  you  no  end  for  the  list  of  Southern  gen- 
erals who  were  born  and  brought  up,  and,  I  assume, 
educated  in  the  North.  Would  it  be  too  much  trouble 
for  you  to  find  out  and  let  me  know  how  long  they  lived 
in  the  North,  how  old  they  were  when  they  went  South, 
and  of  what  Northern  college  they  were  graduates? 
You  will  readily  see  how  important  this  is — or  I  am 
wondering  if  you  really  do  realize  the  importance  of  it? 

"To  this  day,  I  find  that  some  of  our  most  ac- 
complished and  broadminded  men  in  the  North  who 
were  officers  in  the  Union  Army  still  think  poorly  of 
the  culture  of  most  Southern  men,  such  is  the  intense 
prejudice  which  still  lingers  in  the  hearts  rather  than 
in  the  minds  of  the  most  tolerant.  Against  this  comes 
the  fact  that  so  many  Northern  men  fought  on  the 
Southern  side  and  the  weight  of  that  fact  would  be 
greatly  increased  if  the  collateral  fact  is  added  that 
they  spent  the  first  part  of  their  lives  in  the  North  and, 
especially,  that  they  were  graduates  of  Northern  col- 
leges and  universities. 

"Of  course,  there  is  no  hurry  about  this  because, 
as  I  have  told  you,  that  phase  of  my  work  will  not  be 
reached  until  I  take  up  Volume  III,  which  will  be  two 
or  three  years  at  the  earliest.  Nevertheless,  I  have  a 
rule  that  even  if  I  am  not  to  use  certain  material  for  a 
long  time,  I  better  get  it  while  it  is  available.  So,  if  you 
will  get  for  me  all  you  can  now,  I  shall,  when  the  time 

51 


LIBRARY     

UNIVERSITY  OF  HUNOtS 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

comes,  if  necessary,  write  to  the  archivists  of  the  South- 
ern States  as  you  suggest. 

"Thank  you  so  much  for  sending  me  the  copies  of 
the  North  Carolina  Reviews  and  especially  the  source 
book.  'Old  Days  at  Chapel  Hill.'  That  is  the  kind  of 
material  I  am  after.  What  trustworthy  persons  saw 
and  heard  is  practically  the  only  data  that  can  be  made 
use  of. 

"I  repeat,  that  the  refutation  of  what  Horton  says 
is  the  'falsehood'  about  Davis's  escape  in  woman's 
clothes,  is  of  the  utmost  importance.  I  am  well  ac- 
quainted by  correspondence  with  Dr.  Archibald 
Henderson,  and  hope  he  will  be  able  to  get  the  source 
material  on  this  point.  (I  had  written  Beveridge  that 
I  was  applying  to  Dr.  Henderson,  who  is  such  a  well  in- 
formed historian  and  scholar,  for  all  the  source  ma- 
terial on  this  point).  Since  that  story  has  become  so 
imbedded  in  the  Northern  mind  and  in  'history'  you  will 
see  that  the  denial  of  it  must  be  by  first-hand  and  ab- 
solutely overwhelming  testimony.  I  shall,  of  course,  go 
over  with  minute  care  all  the  material  of  which  you 
make  mention,  when  the  time  comes. 

"There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  inflammatory  talk 
of  Northern  preachers  did  much  to  bring  about  the 
catastrophe;  if  I  have  not  made  that  plain.  I  shall  try 
to  do  so.  In  strict  confidence.  Professor — of — (within 
ten  years  he  will  be  the  head  of  American  historical 
scholarship)  tells  me  that  when  one  gets  down  to  bed 
rock,  it  must  be  admitted  that  these  very  men  brought 
on  the  war. 

"The  trouble  with  the  whole  thing  is  that  I  must 
condense — obviously,  I  cannot  write  an  encyclopedia. 
The  material  already  at  hand  which  nobody  has  seen 
fit  to  touch — although  it  is  original  and  source  material 
— is  so  very  great  that  my  chief  problem  is  to  get  it 

52 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

within  some  reasonable  limit. 

"Yes,  indeed,  dear  Mr.  Barbee,  I  should  like  no  end 
for  you  to  write  me  a  statement  of  this  particular  phase, 
especially  that  concerning  our  Church  (I  also,  am  a 
Methodist,  you  know),  but  pray  state  the  original  auth- 
ority for  everything  you  say,  volume,  page  and  date. 

"That's  an  immense  story  about  Mrs.  Stowe,  and, 
while  it  comes  after  our  period,  it  will  be  of  first  im- 
portance to  my  friend,  and  in  some  sense  my  protege, 
Mr.  Claude  Bowers  of  the  New  York  World,  who  is 
now  at  work  on  a  book  on  the  Reconstruction  period. 
Shall  I  put  him  in  touch  with  you? 

"Thank  you  again  and  believe  me  with  every  good 
wish, 

"Faithfully, 
ALBERT  J.  BEVERIDGE." 

To  this  treasured  letter  I  replied  several  days  later, 
but  my  letter  covers  ground  already  gone  over1  in  this 
correspondence,  so  I  will  make  no  quotations  from  it 

I  hope  that  those  who  have  followed  these  letters 
have  not  lost  sight  of  their  purpose,  and  that  the  ter- 
rible admissions  on  the  part  of  Senator  Beveridge  will 
sink  deep  into  the  hearts  of  Southern  people.  Lincoln 
was  no  demi-god,  but  a  human  being  of  very  coarse 
fibre,  with  a  great  brain  and  with  many  ugly  spots  in 
his  character.  His  ambition  and  his  vanity  were  no 
less  causes  of  the  war  than  the  militant  hatred  of  the 
Northern  parsons  against  the  South.  Northern  his- 
torians are  beginning  to  dig  into  the  facts  and  as  they 
dig  they  are  finding  out  what  a  noble  people  lived  in 
the  South  before  the  War,  and  how  cruelly  and  merci- 
lessly they  were  treated  by  Lincoln  and  his  cohorts. 
If  Beveridge  had  lived  to  complete  his  history  I  am 
confident  he  would  have  played  fair  with  the  South, 
and  that  his  Life  of  Lincoln  would  have  done  much  to 

53 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

destroy  the  Lincoln  myth.  There  are  others,  however, 
who  are  digging  in  the  mine  which  he  explored,  and  to 
these  we  look  to  tell  the  truth  about  our  people. 

I  found  that  wherever  I  turned  for  help  for  Bev- 
eridge  our  leading  historians  and  scholars  did  not  trust 
any  Northern  man  to  write  a  fair  history  of  the  War, 
and  few  of  them  would  give  me  any  help  for  him.  All 
of  them  offered  me  help  if  I  wished  to  use  the  material 
myself.  Should  we  not  begin  to  shed  this  armor  plate 
of  distrust  and  assist  these  Northern  men  who  show  a 
disposition  to  write  a  truthful  history? 

One  of  the  most  amazing  things  I  have  encountered 
is  the  ignorance  of  our  own  people  of  their  own  history, 
and  the  cowardice  of  many  of  our  newspapers  in  re- 
fusing to  print  anything  critical  of  Lincoln.  A  genera- 
tion has  grown  up  among  us  taught  from  Northern 
written  histories  and  as  a  consequence  they  do  not  know 
the  history  made  by  their  forebears.  This  is  a  shame. 
It  should  be  corrected. 

Another  astounding  thing  that  has  come  to  my 
notice  is  that  our  people  have  adopted  an  air  of  indif- 
ference to  the  name  and  fame  of  Jefferson  Davis.  This 
crops  out  in  all  the  letters  that  have  come  to  me  from 
many  sources  since  this  Beveridge  series  began  to  be 
published.  I  expected  Northern  men,  as  they  have 
done,  to  ask  me :  "Why  do  you  seek  to  elevate  Davis 
above  Gen.  Lee  when  everybody  knows  that  Davis  is  not 
to  be  compared  to  Lee  in  greatness?"  But  not  Southern 
men. 

In  closing  out  this  series  of  letters  might  I  not 
ask  in  what  particular  regard  Gen.  Lee  was  greater  than 
Jefferson  Davis?  As  a  man?  As  a  Christian?  As  a 
soldier?    As  a  statesman?    As  a  martyr? 

Davis  won  his  spurs  as  soldier  before  Lee  won  his. 
Davis  was  one  of  the  very  few  great  statesmen  of  our 

54 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

history.  Davis  organized  the  Confederacy  and  kept  it 
going.  Davis  picked  Lee  for  commander  of  the  armies 
and  freely  gave  him  advice  and  where  there  was  a 
conflict  of  opinion,  as  to  protecting  Richmond,  for  in- 
stance, who  will  dare  say  that  Davis  was  wrong? 

Was  Davis  a  traitor?  No  more  than  Lee.  Was  Lee 
loyal  after  the  war?  So  was  Davis.  Lee  advised  his 
armies  to  go  home  and  begin  the  battle  of  life  anew, 
without  hatred  or  rancor  towards  their  conquerors. 
Davis  told  the  whole  South  to  do  the  same  thing,  after 
the  Confederacy  fell.  And  Davis  was  our  sacrificial 
martyr. 

Beveridge  had  a  very  high  opinion  of  the  charac- 
ter and  statesmanship  of  Davis.  His  last  speech  in 
the  Senate,  one  of  the  most  poignant  orations  that  ever 
was  delivered  in  that  body,  breathing  a  spirit  of  peace 
and  brotherly  love  and  love  for  the  Union,  captivated 
Beveridge,  as  it  will  any  honest  mind  that  reads  it. 
Shall  we  for  whom  he  suffered  so  much,  the  very  pangs 
of  hell  and  all  the  tortures  that  a  fiendish  body  of  men 
could  heap  upon  him,  think  less  of  Davis  than  one  who 
was  brought  up  to  believe  that  in  the  crisis  of  his  life 
he  was  a  coward  and  a  poltroon?  God  forbid  it.  When 
the  real  history  of  the  War  is  written  it  will  be  found 
that  the  traitors  within  the  Confederacy  and  the  thorns 
in  the  flesh  of  Jefferson  Davis  had  as  much,  perhaps, 
to  do  with  the  overthrow  of  the  Confederacy  as  did  the 
armed  hordes  of  the  Republican  party  in  the  North. 


55 


THE  SEQUEL. 

T'HERE  is  a  sequel  to  almost  everything  in  life — so  it 
has  occurred  to  me  that  the  sequel  to  the  Beveridge 
correspondence,  which  was  published  in  The  Sunday 
Citizen  during  the  month  of  May,  might  prove  interest- 
ing. 

To  my  mind  the  most  important  thing  is  the  reac- 
tion of  the  public  to  some  of  the  startling  truths  con- 
tained in  that  correspondence.  A  cultured  visitor  from 
Boston  who  read  the  first  article  while  a  guest  at  Grove 
Park  Inn,  and  had  the  others  sent  to  him  at  his  New 
England  home,  wrote  me  while  here  that  he  was  a  stu- 
dent of  Lincoln's  life  and  age,  and  wished  to  know  what 
I  meant  by  the  "Lincoln  myth."  He  also  asked  me  this 
pregnant  question :  "Why  do  you  seek  to  elevate  Jeff. 
Davis  about  Robert  E.  Lee  when  everyone  knows  that 
the  two  men  are  not  to  be  mentioned  in  the  same  week." 
Of  course  he  got  the  information  he  wanted,  and  it  was 
not  to  his  liking,  for  after  an  exchange  of  several  let- 
ters, in  which  he  discovered  himself  to  be  as  ignorant 
of  the  Real  Lincoln  as  he  was  of  the  Real  Davis,  he 
wrote  me:  "If  you  want  to  fight  the  war  all  over  again 
I  leave  the  field  to  you." 

As  I  had  not  mentioned  war  nor  said  one  word 
about  the  justice  of  the  South's  position,  nor  even  inti- 
mated that  the  South  was  not  fighting  to  keep  the 
negroes  in  slavery,  it  was  a  rather  sad  denouement  to 
an  otherwise  interesting  excursion  in  history.  It  demon- 
strated to  me  again,  what  I  have  long  known,  that  the 
minds  of  even  cultured  Northern  people  have  been  so 

56 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

poisoned  against  the  South  and  her  noble  history  by 
misrepresentations  of  Northern  historians  that  they  are 
not  open  to  the  truth. 

One  of  the  most  brilliant  historians  in  America,  who 
was  a  lifelong  and  intimate  friend  of  the  late  Senator 
Beveridge,  wrote  me  on  June  5:  "Times  HAVE  chang- 
ed. Beveridge  once  told  me  that  in  thinking  back  on  the 
things  he  heard  and  believed  in  his  boyhood,  in  a  house- 
hold steeped  with  prejudice  and  in  a  community  so 
poisoned,  he  shuddered  and  was  ashamed.,,  I  might 
state  by  way  of  parenthesis  that  I  am  now  engaged  in 
helping  this  famous  man  gather  material  for  another 
history  of  the  South,  and  that  he  is  even  fairer  and 
more  eager  to  get  the  truth,  if  that  is  possible,  than 
Beveridge  showed  himself  to  be. 

Of  course  it  was  to  be  expected  that  Northern  peo- 
ple, having  a  jaundiced  view  of  the  history  made  by  the 
South,  would  be  shocked  and  amazed  at  the  revelations 
contained  in  that  correspondence  but  what  was  more 
amazing  and  shocking  to  this  writer  was  that  any  in- 
telligent informed  Southern  person  should  be  so  ig- 
norant of  the  history  made  by  his  fore-fathers  as  my 
letter  bag  shows  some  to  be.  But  if  you  stop  to  think 
of  this  for  a  moment,  why  should  any  of  us  be  shocked 
by  this  statement  of  affairs?  Who  writes  our  history? 
Whence  come  the  text  books  which  we  studied  and  which 
our  children  now  study?     There  is  the  answer. 

If  you  ask  the  average  Southerner  who  started  the 
great  sectional  war,  he  will  state  that  Jefferson  Davis 
did  when  he  ordered  Beauregard  to  fire  on  Fort 
Sumter  .  There  never  was  a  more  atrocious  lie  told  on 
any  people.  It  just  equals  the  lie  that  the  South  was 
fighting  to  preserve  slavery.  Let  us  take  a  lesson  in 
history. 

Before  Lincoln  was  even  inaugurated  president  we 

57 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

see  him  writing  this  confidential  letter,  which  will  be 
found  in  Sheppard's  Life  of  Lincoln,  a  Northern  pub- 
lication:  "Please  present  my  compliments  to  Gen.  Scott 
(commander  of  the  United  States  army)  and  tell  him 
confidentially  to  be  prepared  to  hold  or  retake  the  forts 
as  the  case  may  require  after  my  inauguration.'' 

Gideon  Welles,  Lincoln's  secretary  of  navy,  in  his 
diary  states :  "There  was  not  a  man  in  the  Cabinet  that 
did  not  know  that  an  attempt  to  reinforce  Sumter  would 
be  the  first  blow  of  the  war." 

And  Secretary  Seward,  the  most  malignant  man 
after  Stanton  in  the  Cabinet,  wrote :  "Even  preparation 
to  reinforce  will' precipitate  war.'* 

Every  man  in  Lincoln's  cabinet,  save  two,  opposed 
the  sending  of  worships  to  Charleston,  for  they  knew 
that  meant  war. 

Ships  were  fitted  out,  armed  and  dispatched  to 
Fort  Sumter  by  Lincoln  before  a  single  shot  was  fired 
by  Beauregard,  and  all  the  while  that  was  being  done 
the  people  of  Charleston  were  holding  daily  friendly 
intercourse  with  Major  Anderson — a  Virginian,  by  the 
way — and  even  sending  food  and  refreshments  to  the 
garrison,  and  Lincoln  was  assuring  Europe  the  South 
would  not  be  molested. 

Horton's  History,  written  by  a  Northern  man  in 
1867,  says  of  this  event :  "The  first  gun  of  the  war  was 
the  gun  put  into  that  war  fleet  that  sailed  against 
Charleston.  The  first  gun  fired  at  Fort  Sumter  was 
the  first  gun  in  self-defense.  This  is  the  simple  fact 
stripped  of  all  the  nonsensicals  with  which  it  has  been 
surrounded  by  Abolitionists." 

We  have  seen  from  Lincoln's  own  words  written 
before  he  became  president  what  was  in  his  mind  with 
regard  to  the  South.    Now  we  shall  see  from  his  own 

58 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

words  what  he  thought  of  who  precipitated  the  war. 
Every  student  of  Lincoln's  life  knows  that  one  of  his 
most  intimate  friends  was  Joseph  Medill,  founder  and 
editor  of  the  Chicago  Tribune.  In  TarbelPs  Life  of 
Lincoln,  Vol.  II.  Page  144,  is  found  this  statement  at- 
tributed to  Joseph  Medill  : 

"In  1864  when  the  call  for  extra  troops  came  Chi- 
cago revolted.  Chicago  had  sent  22,000  and  was  drain- 
ed. There  were  no  young  men  to  go,  no  aliens,  except 
what  were  already  bought.  The  citizens  held  a  mass 
meeting  and  appointed  three  men  of  whom  I  (Medill) 
was  one,  to  go  to  Washington  and  ask  Stanton  to  give 
Cook  county  a  new  enrollment.  He  refused.  Then  we 
went  to  President  Lincoln.  T  cannot  do  it,'  said  Lincoln, 
'but  I  will  go  with  you  to  Stanton  and  hear  the  argu- 
ments on  both  sides/ 

"So  we  went  over  to  the  war  department  together. 
Stanton  and  General  Frye  were  there  and  they  both 
contended  that  the  quota  should  not  be  changed.  The 
argument  went  on  for  some  time,  and  was  finally  re- 
ferred to  Lincoln,  who  had  been  silently  listening.  When 
appealed  to,  Lincoln  turned  to  us  with  a  black  and 
frowning  face :  'Gentlemen'  he  said,  with  a  voice  full  of 
bitterness,'  after  Boston,  Chicago  has  been  the  chief  in- 
strument in  bringing  this  war  on  the  country.  The 
Northwest  opposed  the  South  as  New  England  opposed 
the  South.  It  is  you,  Medill,  who  is  largely  responsible 
for  making  blood  flow  as  it  has.  You  called  for  war 
until  you  had  it.  /  have  given  it  ta  you.  What  you  have 
asked  for  you  have  had.  Now  you  come  here  begging 
to  be  let  off  from  the  call  for  more  men,  which  I  have 
made  to  carry  on  the  war  you  demanded.  You  ought  to 
be  ashamed  of  yourselves.  Go  home  and  raise  your 
6,000  men.'* 

This  is  not  quoted  in  any  other  spirit  than  the  truth 

59 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

of  history,  and  simply  to  show  that  even  so-called  stu- 
dents of  the  life  and  age  of  Lincoln  do  not  know  what 
Northern  historians  have  written  about  the  war  presi- 
dent. You  find  in  this  statement  the  genesis  of  the  bit- 
ter, malignant  hatred  of  the  South  that  even  to  this  day 
types  the  editorial  policy  of  the  Chicago  Tribune. 

Beveridge's  death  was  certainly  a  terrible  loss  to 
the  South.  If  he  had  lived  and  our  correspondence  had 
continued,  as  it  seemed  destined  to  do,  it  was  my  inten- 
tion to  track  with  him  the  whole  course  of  Southern  his- 
tory through  the  period  of  which  he  was  treating.  I 
intended  showing  him  how  little  the  Negro  had  to  do 
with  the  war,  when  only  200,000  slave  owners  fought 
in  the  Southern  armies  and  315,000  slaveholders  fought 
in  the  Northern  armies.  That  Lincoln  never  freed  a 
slave  in  the  slave  states  that  remained  in  the  Union  but 
that  it  was  a  Southern  man,  John  Brooks  Henderson  of 
Missouri  who  offered  the  amendment  to  the  Constitution 
that  freed  all  of  the  negroes  on  American  soil.  That 
Gen.  Grant,  who  commanded  the  Union  Armies,  was 
a  slaveholder  who  never  freed  his  slaves,  and  Gen.  Lee 
who  commanded  the  Southern  armies,  freed  his  slaves, 
before  there  was  any  secession  and  that  Lincoln  himself 
was  indifferent  to  the  future  of  the  African  race. 

Gen.  Don  Piatt,  one  of  the  big  men  in  the  Union 
army,  in  1887  published  a  book  entitled :  "Men  Who 
Saved  the  Union,"  in  which  occurs  the  following  state- 
ment: "I  found  that  Mr.  Lincoln  could  no  more  feel 
sympathy  for  that  wretched  race  than  he  could  for 
the  horse  he  worked  or  the  hog  he  killed.  Descended 
from  the  poor  whites  of  the  South,  he  inherited  the  con- 
tempt, if  not  the  hatred,  held  by  that  class  for  the 
negro." 

I  am  told  that  Dr.  F.  A.  Sondley  of  Asheville  has 
in  his  library  a  book  of  historic  value  in  which  it  is  stat- 

60 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

ed  that  after  the  war  had  opened  Grant,  in  bidding  a 
friend  who  was  leaving  St.  Louis  to  join  the  Confed- 
eracy goodbye,  said:  "I  will  be  joining  you  in  a  few 
weeks."  This  fact  if  true, — and  why  should  it  be  doubt- 
ed?— is  one  of  those  that  Beveridge  characterized  in  his 
letters  to  me  as  "stupendous. "  He  never  could  get  over 
the  excitement  caused  by  the  growing  knowledge  that  the 
North  was  not  in  favor  of  the  war — that  probably  not 
more  than  one-third  of  the  people  of  the  North  at  the 
outset  and  for  the  first  two  years  of  the  war  supported 
Lincoln  in  the  war — and  that  so  many,  many  Northern 
men  of  importance  sided  with  the  South  in  the  bloody 
conflict.  In  one  of  the  Beveridge  articles  I  gave  a  list  of 
the  important  Northern  Methodist  preachers  who  came 
with  the  Southern  church  after  the  Separation  in  1844, 
and  as  history  shows  actually  typed  Southern  Metho- 
dism. I  referred  to  a  list  of  Northern  men  who  held 
high  command  in  the  Confederate  armies.  Here  is  a 
place  to  introduce  that  list,  which  is  by  no  means  com- 
plete and  does  not  include  any  man  below  the  rank  of 
brigadier  general : 


61 


MAJOR  GENERALS 

John  C.  Pemberton,  born  in  Philadelphia,  appoint- 
ed from  Virginia. 

Samuel  G.  French,  born  in  New  Jersey,  appointed 
from  Mississippi. 

Martin  L.  Smith,  born  in  New  York  city,  appoint- 
ed from  FTorida. 

Franklin  Gardner,  born  in  New  York,  appointed 
from  Louisiana. 

Bushrod  R.  Johnson,  born  in  Ohio,  appointed  from 
Tennessee. 

Lunsford  L.  Lomax,  born  in  Newport  R.  I.,  ap- 
pointed from  Virginia. 

BRIGADIER  GENERALS 

Samuel  Cooper,  born  in  Hackensack,  N.  J.,  ap- 
pointed from  Virginia. 

James  M.  Withers,  born  in  Wisconsin,  appointed 
from  Alabama. 

Daniel  Ruggles,  born  in  Massachusetts,  appointed 
from  Virginia. 

Roswell  S.  Ripley,  born  in  Ohio,  appointed  from 
South  Carolina. 

Albert  Pike,  born    in    Boston,    Massachusetts,    ap- 
pointed from  Arkansas. 

Albert  G.  Blanchard,  born  in  Massachusetts,  ap- 

62 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

pointed  from  Louisiana. 

Johnson  K.  Duncan,  born  at  York,  Pennsylvania,  ap- 
pointed from  Louisiana. 

Danville  Leadbetter,  born  in  Maine,  appointed  from 
Alabama. 

Edward  A.  Perry,  born  in  Massachusetts,  appoint- 
ed from  Florida. 

William  Steele,  born  at  Albany,  New  York,  ap- 
pointed from  Texas. 

Daniel  M.  Frost,  born  in  New  York,  appointed  from 
Mississippi. 

Archibald  Gracie,  Jr.,  born  in  New  York,  appoint- 
ed from  Alabama. 

Francis  A.  Sharp,  born  in  Indiana,  appointed  from 
Florida. 

Alto  F.  Strabl,  born  in  Ohio,  appointed  from  Ten- 
nessee. 

Lawrence  S.  Ross,  born  in  Iowa,  appointed  from 
Texas. 

Daniel  H.  Reynolds,  born  in  Ohio,  appointed  from 
Arkansas. 

Walter  H.  Stevens,  born  in  New  York,  appointed 
from  Texas. 

Josiah  Gorgas,  born  in  Pennsylvania,  appointed 
from  Alabama. 

This  list  does  not  include  all  of  the  Northern  men 
who  held  high  command  in  the  Southern  armies.  A 
list  of  those  who  held  the  ranks  of  colonel,  major,  cap- 
tain, and  lieutenant  would  fill  several  columns  of  this 
newspaper,  and  multiplied  thousands  of  Northern  men 
fought  as  private  soldiers  in  the  Southern  armies. 


63 


AN  EXCURSION  IN  SOUTHERN  HISTORY 

Is  it  not  high  time  that  our  own  Southern  historians 
were  gathering  materials  from  all  sources  and  writing 
a  correct  history  of  the  South?  It  should  not  be  a 
boastful  history  but  a  plain,  unvarnished  tale  of  the 
splendid  record  the  South  has  made  in  art,  in  literature, 
in  science,  in  war  and  in  statesmanship.  Such  a  his- 
tory for  instance,  will  revive  the  names  of  Matthew 
Fontaine  Maury  and  Raphael  Semmes,  the  two  fore- 
most men  the  American  navy  has  produced,  not  one 
word  about  either  appears  in  any  standard  history. 
Maury  was  probably  the  foremost  scientist  this  coun- 
try has  produced,  so  recognized  in  Europe,  but  because 
he  was  a  Southern  man  and  sided  with  the  South,  he 
is  obliterated  from  history.  Such  a  history  will  place 
Poe  and  Timrod  and  Paul  Hamilton  Hayne  and  Lanier 
in  their  rightful  place  as  the  foremost  poets  America 
has  produced.  It  will  tell  you  among  many  other  things 
that  Augustin  Daly.  America's  greatest  playwright, 
was  a  Tar  Heel ;  that  the  first  college  founded  in  Amer- 
ica was  in  Virginia,  the  first  state  university  was  in 
North  Carolina,  the  first  colleges  devoted  to  the  educa- 
tion of  women  in  the  world  at  Macon,  Georgia,  and 
Athens,  Alabama,  and  the  first  astronomical  observa- 
tory in  America  at  Chapel  Hill.  Such  a  history  will 
teach  you  that  the  South  was  always  for  Union,  and 
that  the  War  of  Secession  was  no  Civil  War  but  a  War  of 
Freedom,  the  South  emptying  her  veins  in  a  futile  ef- 
fort to  protect  liberty  on  this  continent. 

Beveridge  was  learning  this.  Other  Northern  his- 
torians will  take  up  the  pen  he  laid  down,  and  carry 
on  where  he  left  off.  We  of  the  South  have  every  right 
to  give  them  all  the  help  we  can,  to  the  end  that  our 
own  glory  may  be  uncovered  and  shown  to  be  the  glory 
of  the  whole  American  people. 

THE  END 


64 


